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LETHAL MEASURES

A lethal medical thriller, bringing back forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock of Los Angeles Memorial Hospital (Deadly Exposure, 1998, etc.), that for sheer tonnage of pathological detail outweighs Patricia Cornwell’s medical exams of the shot and chopped, stabbed and stewed'and other hastily departed. Goldberg, a clinical professor at UCLA Medical Center, always plots ingeniously for the first half or maybe two-thirds of his novels, then falls into standard fare for his windups. An assassination plot is being mounted against the president, who will be visiting L.A. to dedicate a new medical institute at Memorial and award Medals of Freedom to Joanna and two other doctors for heroic services rendered in the far north. Joanna, who has split with LAPD homicide detective Jake Sinclair, is verging on engagement to multimillionaire banker Paul du Maurier when a huge explosion killing at least 20 people seals her off from du Maurier and teams her again with Sinclair. The bomb is clearly the work of terrorists'but was it an accidental “work incident,” or the rehearsal for an even bigger bang? And if it is, where will the second explosion take place? Joanna’s skills are tested to the max as she tries to reassemble body parts, get a fix on the bombers (who used a vastly intensified version of C-4 for their deed), and forecast their big political victim. When too many clues leak out, Joanna’s own lab is bombed to destroy evidence. The villains, no secret from the reader, are part of a fanatical paramilitary group that, feeling insulted and injured by the US government, now wants to cut off the serpent’s head. A gripping tale that sails along on the wings of Joanna’s Holmesian genius for gory and relentless deductive detail right up to the routine ending, which calls off all moral dilemmas to put Joanna in peril.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-525-94528-8

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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BADLANDS

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

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