Customer Reviews

Lethal Measures (Joanna Blalock Mysteries)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have enjoyed some of Leonard Goldberg's medical thrillers in the past. However, he has stumbled with "Lethal Measures". Joanna Blalock is back as the brilliant pathologist and Jake Sinclair is also present as the crackerjack policeman who still holds a torch for Joanna. This time the subject is domestic terrorism, in the form of a small band of fanatics who will kill anyone to get back at the federal government. The characters never come to life in this book and the amateurish dialogue is painful to read. However, the author has done his research well and the details about forensic anthropology, bombmaking and prosthetic devices are fascinating and authentic. Unfortunately, a romantic subplot is thrown in almost as an afterthought. The body count is high, and there are details about what a bomb does to a human being that some might find distubring. The book needed sharper and more realistic dialogue and more originality in the plotting. As it stands, it is a run-of-the-mill thriller.

Joanna Blalock is a world-renowned forensic pathologist who's globally in demand, but centers her activities in Los Angeles' Memorial Hospital. At thirty-nine, Joanne feels she has achieved her life's goals just as she envisioned them. Even her personal life seems perfect as she sees the urbane international financier Paul du Maurier instead of wallowing over the inability of homicide detective Jake Sinclair to commit to a lasting relationship.

However, national events soon rip Joanne's world apart. It starts with a terrorist bomb destroying a residential street, killing innocent people. The FBI insists that Joanne perform the autopsies, which cancels her romantic weekend. Paul resents the intrusion and abruptly ends their relationship. Evidence mounts that the perpetrators, the Righteous, plan for something ugly to occur on April 19th. Their motive is simply to revenge the Feds killing their leader's son and wife in a shoot-out.

Anyone who enjoys a Patricia Cornwell tale will gain much pleasure from LETHAL MEASURES. The medical thriller stars a forensic pathologist with a great sense of self-deprecating humor ant that makes her more likable and gentler than Scarpetta. The fast-paced story line has touches of romance that provide a solid counterpoint to the rising tension that readers feel as they grasp the full scope of the terrorists' plan. Besides the characters seeming real, Memorial Hospital feels like a genuine place and that adds to the believability of the tale. After this story, readers will quickly search for other novels by Leonard Goldberg (see his "deadly" series).

Harriet Klausner

I was browsing a local bookstore when I ran across this paperback edition of Dr. Goldberg's lastest Joanna Blalock/Jake Sinclair installment. If one has not tried this series and like such thrillers as ones written by Ridley Pearson, Michael Palmer and Robin Cook...READ THIS!

I have been a Joanna Blalock/Jake Sinclair fan since the beginning installments of these characters written by Dr. Goldberg. I look forward to each new installment as much as I look forward to the Daphne Matthews/Lou Boldt installments from Ridley Pearson. I purchased the book on late Friday afternoon and had it finished by Sunday morning! It's like taking a breath taking ride on an awesome rollercoaster. In a couple of places my hearts was pumping so hard out of suspense that I actually had to put the book down before flipping the page in a few minutes.

There are very few authors that I buy their books unseen or without ever cracking open the inside of the cover jacket to read the synopsis. Dr. Goldberg is among one of the elite to which I do this for. I usually purchase my books in the hardback version once they hit the bookshelves but somehow, this installment got passed me. I was most pleasantly surprised when I ran across the paperback version.

Try it! You'll like it!

This was a good ole terrorist, beat-the-bomb sort of thriller, and it did a pretty good job. The characters were a little two-dimensional and not as likable as I usually enjoy (the good guys, not the bad guys). They actually reminded me of other characters, or maybe I've read some of his other work. It's hard to remember... It's a good action, down to the wire, suspenseful book, but there's nothing to keep you guessing (no mystery or really bizarre plot twists). I'd recommend it if there's not much else, but wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

After a few really disappointing books, Leonard Goldberg has finally written a great thriller. The only problem I have is that they're referred to a medical thrillers and they're not. Yes, Joanna Blalock is a pathologist but the book is more of a "whodunnit". The book centres around a devastating explosion that killed several presumed terrorists. Dr. Joanna Blalock is called to the scene to investigate what is left of the victims. By piecing together the forensic evidence, Joanna unveils a horrifying, sinister plot.

This is one of those suspense novels that let the reader know early on who the bad guys are (at least some important ones), what they're up to, and what their methods and motives are. That can work if the efforts of the good guys to solve the puzzle and foil the criminals engage the reader's interest. And Goldberg has obviously managed that for a good number of readers -largely, I suspect, through all the gee-whiz forensics.

But some may be too distracted, as I was, by stylistic and other irritants. By the fourth time or so that one of Goldberg's characters "smiled thinly," for instance, I found myself musing on the derivation of the word "cliché." (It comes from a French term for a chunk of printer's type, used to print a whole phrase over and over.) I had read only about a third of the book by then, and I gave it up not long after. So my comments should be assessed with that limitation in mind.

Yet I can't regret having abandoned the book when I did. For one thing, I was spared reading any more passages in which the police and the forensic path team distinguish between "Caucasians" and "Hispanics" or even "Mexicans." They are oblivious to the cross-classification, failing to distinguish between categories for race and those for national origin or background (apart from the fact that "race" as a category is at best highly vulnerable from a scientific standpoint).

It may seem unfair to single Dr. Goldberg out in this regard, since plenty of articles in medical journals employ comparable categories as givens not even requiring definition. But he did go even farther in at least one instance. On page 46 Joanna and Jake are discussing a straight black hair "with medium thickness." Jake says "It could be American or Mediterranean," and Joanna adds "Or Mexican." So now "American" and "Mediterranean" can be used contrastively too. Hmmm. Is someone of Italian or Greek background born in the U.S. "American" or "Mediterranean"?

It all reminds me of Samuel Richardson's classification (in "Sir Charles Grandison"): "Men, Women, and Italians." Got anything for a headache, Dr. Goldberg?

This 2000 book follows the typical "action" book where an evil greedy doctor causes havoc until he's caught, with far-right religious fanatics thrown in for laughs.
In this story, after a large bomb explosion in Los Angeles leaves sixteen dead and twenty-eight injured, the FBI demands that all the injured be treated at our heroine's hospital, Memorial Hospital, AND that the incredibly brilliant, beautiful and desirable Joanna perform all the autopsies herself -- autopsies which largely involve examining small body parts.
Of course, as always, Joanna is perfection itself: her supervisor can't "believe someone so young and pretty could have that much brains." And her sometimes-boyfriend Jake? Goldberg says, twice in ten pages, "Jake was so damn good-looking."
In contrast, Murdock, the supervisor with whom Joanna frequently squabbles, "was aging so rapidly. His hair was now snow white, his face heavily lined and dotted with prominent age spots." Goldberg's message? In-group folks are Beautiful, while not-in-the-cool-group people age prematurely. Yet Goldberg frequently reports Joanna and Jake smoking. What's so attractive about that?
Affected by being in the same city with Jake, Joanna turns to making Neanderthal threats: when the Boxing Commission won't turn over confidential records, Joanna threatens to confiscate all their files and issue a subpoena forcing the entire Boxing Commission to help search the files. To convince a rehab clinic to hand over its confidential records, Jake and Joanna threaten to "red-tape every office and door in this building and put a cop by each of them to make sure no chart or record leaves.... And it will stay that way -- until some judge sorts everything out for us." Jake tells a man's new widow, "if you're lying to me, you're going to need an attorney. A real good one."
Bloopers and fractured history abound in this book.
Triangulation of cell phone calls is NOT done "by plotting the lines of transmissions as they bounced off the satellite orbiting high above the earth." Cell phones do NOT directly transmit to, or receive from, satellites. Goldberg continues, "That was how they located O.J. Simpson in his Bronco on the freeway." Sorry, wrong again! What really happened in the O.J. case is that another driver recognized A.C. Cowlings as the Bronco passed, and phoned O.J.'s location to the police.
Goldberg claims that an AK-47 can "fire a hundred rounds in seconds." While the top rate of fire of an AK-47 is six hundred rounds per minute, the rifle never fires a hundred rounds in seconds because its magazine size is thirty or forty rounds, and the barrel overheats quickly. Goldberg carries this lack of understanding into his rant against so-called Saturday night specials and "assault weapons." (Later, in Deadly Harvest, Goldberg confuses a .223 caliber bullet with a .50 caliber bullet.)
Goldberg claims that Idaho vital statistics records are only kept in the county courthouse. As in most or all states, copies of Idaho vital statistics are kept in the state capital.
Goldberg has the President's fictional secret service agent, Jack Youngblood, constantly worry about a replay of the Kennedy assassination, without mentioning whether Goldberg's "Jack Youngblood" is related to the real-life Rufus Youngblood, LBJ's secret service agent during the JFK assassination, and later deputy director of the agency. It is historically unclear whether JFK ordered agents off the rear bumper, and whether agents in that location could have prevented or lessened harm to JFK.
What's the ending? Oh yes, Joanna escapes a perilous situation, with Jake's help, and saves the day. Surprised? I think not. The only real decision Joanna faces in this book is which man to date. And Jake is faced with no challenges but to do his job, threaten those who cross him, and pursue the goddess Joanna.
This book is not recommended, unless you're competing in the "See How Many Mistakes YOU Can Find" contest, or thoroughly enjoy one-dimensional wooden characters.

Author Leonard Goldberg has written a gripping tale that keeps the reader turning pages. It's hard to put this book down until you find out what happens. An experienced detective and a forensic pathologist pursue domestic terrorists who are bent on blowing up the president of the United States and scores of bystanders. The plot is an ingenious one with enough unexpected twists and turns to surprise even those of us who generally sniff out the ending of a mystery novel half-way through the story. I'll be looking for - and buying - the other Goldberg novels.

I'm still reading this novel, so my review must be read with a skeptical eye. However, I'm seeing a sameness to this entry in the series that seems to appear in each of Leonard Goldberg's Joanna Blalock novels. She's always broken up with Jake at the beginning, only to reunite (I suppose) by the end. It's always raining in Southern California (this is desert, Mr. Goldberg, despite the lush lawns and sprawling golf courses), and the threat/target seems obvious (although I'm hoping for a surprise here). This doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the books, however. The medical investigation aspects of the novels are wonderful, the action keeps you reading, and there are enough roller-coaster moments to leave you breathless. What *does* tend to drop me out of the story is Mr. Goldberg's insistence at putting in not-so-subtle simplistic messages of the liberal ilk, which prompted me to stop reading and write this review. Airing his politics in a fictional manner spares him from having to support his views with facts. I was so irritated, I checked some of his idiotic claims, and they were as false (or at least simplified to the extent they had no merit) as I suspected. Stick to story telling, please, Mr. Goldberg. It's what you're best at.

*spoilers*
This 2000 book follows the typical "action" book where an evil greedy doctor causes havoc until he's caught, with far-right religious fanatics thrown in for laughs.
In this story, after a large bomb explosion in Los Angeles home with sixteen dead and twenty-eight injured, the FBI demands that all the injured be treated at our heroine's hospital, Memorial Hospital, AND that the incredibly brilliant, beautiful and desirable Joanna perform all the autopsies herself -- autopsies which largely involve examining small body parts.
Of course, as always, Joanna is perfection itself: her supervisor can't "believe someone so young and pretty could have that much brains." And her sometimes-boyfriend Jake? Joanna says, "He was so damn good-looking." Lest we miss the point, ten pages later we read, "Jake was so damn good-looking."