by Leonard S. Goldberg
Page-Turner of the Week
CHECKING INTO Memorial Hospital, it seems, could be hazardous to your health. At the start of this brainy nail-biter, a young law student and a middle-aged breast-cancer patient mysteriously drop dead at the prestigious Los Angeles institution. And the hospital's forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock—who already has her hands full looking for the identity of a murder victim whose face and fingerprints have been destroyed—is under the gun from her skittish bosses to figure out why. But before long she begins to suspect some brand of sinister goings-on at either Memorial or at the patients' HMO. So she reluctantly turns for help—and a bit of backup—to LAPD Lt. Jake Sinclair, her sometime lover and her partner in crime-solving.
In his third whodunit featuring the feisty physician, author Goldberg, himself a leading Los Angeles pathologist and an in-demand expert at medical malpractice trials, has clearly hit his stride. Deadly Care offers not only fascinating forensics and insider insights into the health-care system but plenty of intriguing characters and a devilish plot—the perfect Rx for curing those reading blahs. (Dutton, $23.95)
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