Patricia Cornwell’s novel ‘Spin’ is too tech-heavy for its own good News Highlights: Patricia Cornwell’s novel ‘Spin’ is too tech-heavy for its own good. Former Charlotte Observer reporter Patricia Cornwell introduced her sleuth, medical examiner Kay Scarpetta, in “Postmortem” in 1990. Since then, the 24 Scarpetta novels have easily sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. Cornwell, who used to be incognito summer on Wrightsville Beach, has even put down a few books in this area. In her spare time, Cornwell also scoured a few cookbooks, two non-fiction books claiming that the English painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper, and three other mysteries starring fictional Charlotte reporter Andy Brazil. (One, “Hornet’s Nest,” was shot in Wilmington as a TNT TV movie that aired in 2012; the old StarNews newsroom co-starred as the Charlotte Observer.)