Chaos opens on a hot summer evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts with Dr. Kay Scarpetta on her way to meet her husband FBI agent Benton Wesley for dinner. Before they get a chance to eat, however, Scarpetta and her investigative partner Pete Marino have to respond to a call about a young woman cyclist who has been attacked.
But even before they are officially notified about the case, Marino and Benton receive suspicious calls, allegedly from someone at Interpol who already knows what has happened. Then it emerges that the attack may be linked to threatening messages Scarpetta has been receiving by email.
This is a slow moving novel, particularly in the early chapters. It picks up after a while but, for me at least, it’s not one of the better novels in the Scarpetta series.