Cornwell, Patricia (1956– )

US crime writer. Cornwell's first successful novel, Postmortem (1990), introduced the popular character of medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, who continued to star in Cornwell's mysteries. Other novels include Cruel and Unusual (1993), The Last Precinct (2000), and Blow Fly (2003). She published the non-fiction work Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper Case Closed in 2002.

Her first book, A Time for Remembering, published in 1983, was the biography of Ruth Graham, wife of US evangelist Billy Graham, who arranged for her care when Cornwell was a child living with her unstable mother in North Carolina.