From Potter’s Field is a 1995 crime fiction novel written by American author Patricia Cornwell.

The sixth book in her highly popular, long-running Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.

The story opens during a grim Christmas season. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, Virginia’s Chief Medical Examiner and a consulting pathologist for the FBI, is called to New York City’s Central Park. A naked woman’s body has been discovered propped against a fountain in the freezing cold.

Scarpetta immediately recognizes the gruesome trademark methods—including a specific gunshot wound and excised sections of skin—of her elusive nemesis, the brilliant serial killer Temple Brooks Gault.

As more victims emerge, including a transit officer in a subway tunnel, Scarpetta realizes that Gault’s trail of violence is a personal game intentionally designed to lure and destroy her. The novel reaches an electrifying, high-tech climax within the dark, menacing labyrinth of the New York City subway system.

Temple Brooks Gault is one of the more terrifying villains in fiction.