Lethal Measures

Rating:
Summary: Suspenseful
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: #5 in this poor series
Review: Lethal Measures -- revised version --
by Leonard Goldberg
=    #5 in the Lethally Poor Joanna Blalock/Jake Sinclair series
Reviewer: Frank from Los Altos
*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."

Rating:
Summary: #5 in this poor series
Review: 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.