Patricia Cornwell (Photo by Patrick Ecclesine)
With more than 40 books under her belt, New York Times bestselling author and former Richmonder Patricia Cornwell is best known for her Dr. Kay Scarpetta series of thrillers, which are mostly set in Richmond. Released earlier this month, Cornwell’s newest novel, “Quantum,” leaves the medical examiner’s office and instead explores the worlds of cybercrime and NASA. It also introduces a brand new heroine, Captain Calli Chase, a NASA test pilot, quantum physicist and cybercrime investigator. On the eve of a top-secret mission to space, a tripped alarm in the tunnels below NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton is only the first sign of sabotage that could spell disaster not only for the space program, but for the safety of the entire country.
“Quantum” is the first book in the Captain Chase series, and the story continues with “Spin,” scheduled to be released Aug. 25, 2020. We caught up with Cornwell via phone to discuss her latest book and what’s next for the author.
Richmond magazine: How long did you live in Richmond? Do you still visit the area?
Patricia Cornwell: I sneak in and out more than people might think; I still have friends there. Richmond is a hugely important place to me. I mean, I actually lived in Richmond longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere, I lived there 20 years. And the most important thing is really Richmond is where my career began. Technically, it began in Charlotte with my first job at the Charlotte Observer, but then my former husband and I moved to Richmond so he could go to [Union Theological Seminary], and that’s when I started trying to write the Scarpetta books and then ended up working at the medical examiner’s office to do the research for that. Basically, that’s how my whole career got launched really right there in Virginia, which is why I am so thrilled that the most interesting place I could think of to come up with a second series — that I think can be far more powerful than even the last one — is once again in Virginia.
RM: How did you come up with the concept for “Quantum?”
Image courtesy MB Communications
Cornwell: I decided after “Chaos,” the last Scarpetta [novel], that, ‘You know what? I’m not doing this anymore, and I’m not even sure I’m going to write books anymore,’ and a lot of my readers don’t know that. The truth is I kind of quit back then, and I decided I’m going to do film and TV. I had written the better part of 40 books ever since I was like 21 years old and I just thought, ‘I’ll do something else that’s not hanging over my head.’ … And two and a half years ago I had somebody say to me in London, ‘There’s all this talk about creating a female James Bond, and if that’s going to happen, would you be interested in something like that?’ And I said, ‘Well, if there’s going to be some female Bond-like character, it should be me who creates that.’ And that’s how this all got born, but originally for purposes of film. Then just through a bunch of different things, suffice it to say, Amazon took a look at the treatment I was doing and they wanted it for a book, and then my agent had others that wanted this thing as a book, and long story short, everybody wanted me to write a book. They did not want me to make a movie.
RM: This is a brand-new setting for you with NASA and the cybertechnology you explore. What did you do to prepare to tell this story?
Cornwell: Well, I started doing the research for the film. I was going to write the screenplay, so I had to do the research anyway. I mean, I just research, that’s what I do, but the other thing that’s really important for your Richmond audience to know is I could not possibly have the foundation to understand these types of sciences and technologies that I have to know for this NASA one, I could not possibly have done that, without the foundation of doing all the research in the forensic labs. You have some of the finest forensic labs anywhere, and that’s where I learned, and scanning my electron microscope in a forensic lab is still doing the same thing in a NASA lab, but it’s just doing it to something else, maybe looking at magnifying a computer chip 100,000 times instead of looking at a hair, but I had to learn these things to write the Scarpetta books, and I had to learn to scuba dive, and I learned to be a pilot. If you want to be an astronaut, you have to learn to scuba dive, you have to be a pilot, and so my character Captain Chase is gonna be an astronaut, and I’m gonna take everybody into space in my second book that I’m working on now.
RM: How much research went into this novel?
Cornwell: It’s been two and a half years of research so far, and I spent a huge amount of time at Langley Research Center in Hampton and also staying on the Air Force base there. I’ve been in and out of Johnson Space Center, down to Kennedy [Space Center]. I’ve been to a great number of the NASA centers. Also private industry, whether it’s Sierra Nevada Corporation, which has the Dream Chaser spaceplane. Peggy Whitson, the astronaut [who broke the record for the most days spent in space by any NASA astronaut], she is the one who has been teaching me about space, and she has been showing me how to spacewalk in this robotic harness they have that simulates microgravity — weightlessness, in other words. So, I’m doing everything I possibly can, just like I always have, so that you can feel what it’s like to be this character, especially when I put her in environments that I’m not really going to get to go to myself except through simulation.
RM: When readers reach the end of “Quantum,” will they be satisfied or left with a cliffhanger?
Cornwell: Well, it’s being described as a cliffhanger … but yes, you will know enough in this book … but I will warn people, it’s not like the Scarpetta books because we’re not dealing with serial killers here, we’re dealing with a villain who, when you meet her, she is going to be sort of the Darth Vader type presence, and so it’s not gonna have the tidy ending of someone gets dispatched with at the end, because I’m creating a protagonist and an antagonist.
RM: Do you foresee continuing the Captain Chase series past “Spin?”
Cornwell: Oh, I sure hope so. If people like the first two, she’s [still] alive and well, and I would really miss her already if I had to say goodbye. [Also] Scarpetta’s not gone, she’s not texted me recently, just so you know, but I think she’s OK out there somewhere, and the big question you folks in Virginia should be asking is, since the last thing I said was she was moving back to Virginia, well, guess what? She did, so what’s gonna happen when Captain Chase has to deal with your Tidewater medical examiner’s office? Scarpetta is the big chief in Virginia, and there will be an allusion to her in the book, and there will be another allusion to her in my next one, and I don’t know what’s going to happen down the road. Those two could run into each other for all we know. So we’re gonna have lots of fun is the moral to that story.
RM: Can you give any hints for what’s in your next book?
Cornwell: When you get to the end of “Quantum” … just suffice it to say that if you think you didn’t know that was going to be a bit of a shocker, wait until you start the new one. … The next one is going to really show you the birth of what I consider an astro spy, somebody who is going to be the cyber investigator astronaut working with Space Force. And I will take you into space in “Spin.” You’re gonna go, so get ready.
