Deadly Exposure

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 scientists--including a former lover--in 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. (Nov.)