I know it's not nice to make fun of the mentally ill...

But I found this hilarious.

From the author's official website, a message from Patricia Cornwell:

We have reason to suspect that someone (or a group of someones) might be mobilizing people to attack me through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, etc., to hurt my sales and reputation.

So here is what I'm asking. Would you please encourage your friends and those you have contact with that if they like Book of the Dead, to please spread the word, and if so inclined, to please post their reviews on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. It's easy to do. For Amazon.com, if you already have an account, you can post a review. Otherwise, open an account by buying a book. You can also check the boxes of other reviews to say you disagree or did not find their review helpful, if this is so. Barnes and Noble does not appear to require any account for posting reviews.

Over the past week there were about fifty bad reviews posted for a book that has gotten the highest reviews for any book I have ever written. If you see what I am saying. Interstingly [sic], this all started right after a Pentagon high official tried to get me to make a pro Bush, pro war appearance on an aircraft carrier and I refused, politely, a photo opportunity to contradict what is in my novel! Not to mention my battle over Ruth Graham's burial. Suddenly, I am getting a barage [sic] of reviews discouraging people from buying my book, though there are some good ones as of today because my supporters are chiming in.

Right now I need my supporters. I am not asking you to write anything you do not mean. But why should hateful people be the only ones heard?

You and your friends can help by reading the book, encouraging others to read it, and posting their feelings about it - honest feelings.

With appreciation, Patricia

Apparently her fans have heeded the call, as there has been a flood of positive reviews for Book of the Dead on Amazon.

I'm not one of those Patricia Cornwell haters, of which there are many in the book world. However, I tried to read the book and it was horrible. Unreadable. And I tried really hard because I was going to review it. But I just couldn't get through it.

It wasn't even bad in a funny way -- for example, the book I'm currently reading has a hilarious passage about a female character getting aroused by "the smell of horseflesh." Book of the Dead has nothing like that. It's just dull, silly and pointless, with unappealing characters and run-of-the-mill lousy prose. Giving it a one-star review is generous.

I've heard for years that Cornwell is paranoid, to the extent that she's probably mentally ill. You would think that, at the least, someone close to her would stop her from these more public displays of lunacy. But apparently not.

Comments

[Maxine]

No speculation on her state of mind, but I've read her books since her debut, and have moved from thinking them great to finding them so awful that, like you, I don't read them any more. I could not believe the plunge in quality.
Bit like James Patterson.

[I.J.Parker]

The flood of positive reviews illustrates that readers of best selling authors have no idea why they buy their books.

[Laura Benedict]

Horseflesh?! Ew. Was she deflowered by a jockey? Was she Catherine the Great? Maybe the writer meant horse sweat--you know, with pheromones. But either way--Ew.

[Norm]

I used to run out and buy the next Cornwell in hardback the day it was released.
The last few books I have waited to read the pb, and then only to find out if they were as bad as the previous book.
I don't hate Patricia I just would wish she would write a book with a decent plot.

[Elaine Flinn]

Sounds like a publicity scam to me. And not a very good one either...

I stopped reading her three books ago...