Amazon.com Review
High concept doesn't get much higher than the
Titanic meets
The Hot Zone plot of Leonard S. Goldberg's fifth medical thriller. Forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock finds cholera in a dead Chinese infant in Los Angeles, and then is immediately whizzed by a top government security officer to
Global Explorer II, a floating laboratory off the coast of Alaska, where a giant, glittering iceberg seems to be releasing a deadly, 65-million-year-old toxin.
Crew members sicken and die, unwittingly aided by an oversexed technician; a storm at sea threatens to capsize the ship; a mysterious cholera epidemic somehow linked to the frozen toxin hits the world; and somebody onboard has personal reasons for hastening the deaths of several members of the world-class scientific team.
It's all heady stuff, loaded with scientific jargon on everything from autopsies to evolution, but Goldberg keeps it moving with muscle and brainpower. And the attractive, vulnerable Blalock holds it all together with her own carefully cultivated credibility. Other Blalock books: Deadly Care, Deadly Harvest, Deadly Medicine, and A Deadly Practice. --Dick Adler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Although it provides compelling medical information, Goldberg's fifth thriller illustrates all too clearly the difference between professional writers and professionals who write. Goldberg (Deadly Practice), a UCLA professor and consulting physician, brings back forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock, whisking her from Los Angeles to the Global Explorer II, a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Alaska. She joins a world-class team of scientistsAincluding a former loverAin an attempt to analyze a deadly, extraterrestrial virus found in an iceberg. As the virus begins to spread from China to the States, people on board drop like flies (a process helped along by a promiscuous woman). The carnage accelerates when Malcolm Niederman, a self-centered researcher suffering from feelings of inferiority, decides to steal the virus to sell to foreign powers. To make matters worse, the iceberg, apparently seeking revenge, turns the ship into the Titanic. Even more people die, their various demises captured in lines like "Hawksworth heard the latch snap into place as the iceberg ran over him, crushing his bones." One would expect that being trapped with a lethal virus on a sinking ship would generate some suspense, but the constant shifts in perspective and the lack of character development make it difficult to feel sympathy or even much concern. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
