Patricia Cornwell on her inspiration for her latest novel, "Quantum"

Patricia Cornwell’s beloved Kay Scarpetta novels were born of something the author had experience with — covering crime and working for a medical examiner.

But her latest series, which launched with Quantum on October 1, headed in a different direction.

When an agent mentioned the idea of a female James Bond, Cornwell started ruminating on what that would look like.

She soon realized that the slickest technology and tools to be found would come from the world of space.

That’s not to say Quantum is science fiction, though.

As Cornwell told Amazon Review, in a conversation about her work on the novel: “Everything that I have in there, from the rocket, to the space station at the end, to the cyber stuff, to sensors in fingers — it all exists today.”

Read Cornwell’s interview here.