We are not alone.

In this galaxy, it’s possible that there are other beings on other planets that may someday show themselves to us. In the meantime, we watch the night skies. We dream and wonder what’s up there – although, in the new novel “Identity Unknown” by Patricia Cornwell, what’s down here may be the bigger concern.

It had been a long time since Kay Scarpetta had more than a close friendship with Nobel Laureate and “ET Whisperer” Salvatore Giordano. It’d been decades, in fact, since she took a temporary job in Rome, met Sal and fell in love with him. Their romance didn’t last, but they remained friends.

She’d just seen him. She remembered thinking something was bothering him, but she didn’t ask and she regretted that because now Sal was dead, obviously murdered, his battered nude body dropped on the bricks of an all-but-abandoned amusement park. The Secret Service found him while they were searching for a reported UAP in the area.

As a scientist, Scarpetta was more skeptic than believer but the link between an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon and Sal’s work with NASA looked to be more than coincidence. She then recalled that local billionaire Ryder Briley owned the derelict theme park.

Briley, father of seven-year-old Luna, was also a bully and a loudmouth and Scarpetta was sure he was a killer, too. He and his wife swore that their daughter accidentally shot herself, but the bullet trajectory was all wrong and Luna’s body was riddled with bruises and old injuries that point to abuse. Briley had friends in high places and she sensed, when he filed a lawsuit against her and others, that further tests would probably prove her hunch.

She was also sure that Sal wasn’t killed by space aliens or monsters, although circumstances surrounding his whereabouts and his wrecked pickup didn’t make any sense. And then there was the distinct feeling that an old nemesis was around, causing deadly trouble.

Could Carrie Grethen be a link between the two complicated cases?

Are you prepared to have the hairs on the back of your neck raised? You’d better be, because “Identity Unknown” isn’t just a little bit creepy.

Maybe it’s that you’re prepared by the season to feel the edginess that author Patricia Cornwell sharpens like a razor blade. Or maybe you just can’t put down a darn good thriller. Either way, reading this book is like knowing that there’s a boogeyman around, and knowing that he’s going to scare you, but not knowing when. And so you wait. And you wait. And you wait…

In the meantime, Cornwell’s insistence on authenticity raises the tension even more by making each of her characters, from minor pathologists to NASA scientists, detectives, and high-tech pilots, seem like interesting people. Like you might want to know them.

The best way to do that is with this book, which can be read as a stand-alone novel if you’re unfamiliar with the series. So grab “Identity Unknown” and settle in. Just make sure you’re not alone.