Forthcoming debut novel gets a cameo plug in Patricia Cornwell's latest mystery
Alison Flood writing in guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 20 January 2009

A clue to the author's tastes ... Patricia Cornwell. Photograph: Jessica Kovaks/Sygma/Corbis

She's a hotshot forensic pathologist who has solved a host of grisly crimes, but it has emerged that Kay Scarpetta also has another skill up her sleeve: time travel.
The latest novel in Patricia Cornwell's bestselling crime series sees its sharp-dressing blonde heroine spotting a yet-to-be published debut novel as she arrives at a crime scene and meets the police officer in charge. "He collected his jacket from the back of a folding chair, and a copy of Philipp Meyer's American Rust from the oak floor under it," Cornwell writes.

But American Rust - a multi-perspective story of disaffected youth in a Pennsylvanian steel town that commanded a six-figure advance for its author - is not published until next month in the US and April in the UK. Cornwell told the New York Times that the police officer was initially going to be reading James L Swanson's Manhunt, but once she read an early copy of American Rust she felt she had to include it in her book, despite the advice of her editor. "I look through his book even now because I admire his writing so much," she said. "The same way, frankly, that I do Hemingway."

Read the rest of Flood's story at the Guardian online.