Super Short Summary

In Patricia Cornwell’s crime fiction, The Body Farm, the fifth book in the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series, Dr. Scarpetta, Chief Medical Examiner for Virginia, investigates the brutal murder of eleven-year-old Emily Steiner alongside the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit. The case is complicated by an exhumation, an apparent agent suicide, personal distractions involving Scarpetta’s niece Lucy, and the discovery that the prime suspect may be Emily’s mother. Sensitive topics in the book include child death, sexual assault, and suicide.