In addition to the Scarpetta novels, Cornwell has written three pseudo-police fictions, known as the Trooper Andy Brazil/Superintendent Judy Hammer series, which are set in North Carolina, Virginia, and off the mid-Atlantic coast. Besides the older-woman/younger-man premise, the books include discomforting themes of scatology and sepsis. Cornwell is also known for her continuing, self-financed search for evidence to support her theory that painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper. She wrote Portrait of a Killer-Jack the Ripper: Case Closed, which was published in 2002 to much controversy, especially within the British art world and among Ripperologists. Cornwall had her troubles with the law, starting with crashing her Mercedes-Benz while under the influence of alcohol in 1993. She was convicted of drunk driving and sentenced to 28 days in a treatment center and later accused of possible plagiarism when eyebrows were raised at similarities between Leslie Sachs’ novel, The Virginia Ghost Murders, and Cornwell’s The Last Precinct-a legal battle in which Cornwell ultimately triumphed. Cornwell has suffered from anorexia nervosa and depression, which began in her late teens. She has also been open about her struggle with bipolar disorder.
