Swindles, sex abuse – and why Patricia Cornwell is blasting into space at 63

Patricia Cornwell is a difficult woman to faze. And no wonder. The best-selling author of the Kay Scarpetta novels has sold a staggering 100 million books worldwide, but her early years were tough. When she was five, her father, a respected US lawyer, abandoned the family on Christmas Day, leaving her mother struggling to raise Patricia and her two brothers. Money was always tight and seeing her mother ‘worrying about trying to pay the bills with only $1 left in the bank made me feel so helpless,’ she says. ‘I learned some empathy from that experience, but I also learned that it was up to me to take care of myself.’

Since then, Cornwell has managed to do that rather well. At one point she was making so much money (more than $10 million a year in sales) that it was some time before she noticed her accountants had been cheating her out of a fortune. She took them to court and won more than €33 million in damages.

‘It’s over with now,’ she says, ‘and I’m grateful. I never thought I’d make any money, I just wanted people to read what I wrote. It’s important to share what money you have,’ she laughs. ‘But no one’s ever accused me of being thrifty!’

There have been Ferraris and private jets over the years, and Cornwell even learned to fly a helicopter. ‘And that was fortunate,’ she says, ‘because being a pilot and a scuba diver helped me a lot – astronauts usually have to be both those things, and I used that research for my latest book.’

Quantum is the first in Cornwell’s new series featuring Captain Calli Chase as its heroine. A Nasa test pilot and quantum physicist, Chase is drawn into investigating a suspicious suicide.

Cornwell, 63, spent two years researching Nasa facilities, and in November she is planning a trip to experience ‘space’ with a zerogravity flight. The flight involves a series of dives and ascents, ‘and you get to experience real weightlessness,’ she says.

The twisting plots in Cornwell’s novels have at times paled in comparison to the drama of her own life. When she was five she was molested by a local patrolman. ‘I was lucky,’ she says. ‘My older brother rode by on his bicycle just as the man was going to pull me into his car. We later found out he was a convicted paedophile.’

When Cornwell was nine, her mother had a psychotic episode and was detained in a psychiatric hospital, leaving the children to be placed with foster parents, who turned out to be abusive.

Cornwell adds: ‘My #MeToo story started when I was five, and it’s probably one of the reasons I have a different view on it. Nothing like that should ever happen, but I do not want that being my identity.’

In later life, when her marriage to Charles Cornwell ended after ten years, she had an affair with FBI agent Margo Bennett, whose husband subsequently attempted to murder his estranged wife.

Cornwell now lives in Boston with neuroscientist Staci Gruber, her wife of 14 years.

Books have always provided her with a refuge in difficult times. ‘I’d read and write stories, and in doing so, I could take myself somewhere else.’ Did she end up writing crime fiction as a way to right wrongs?

‘I think there’s a lot to that. Writing gives you a safe way to deal with emotions – anger, pain, sorrow, loss. But I also think some suffering is a privilege because it makes you stronger.’

Quantum by Patricia Cornwell, is published by Amazon €28.