Desperate forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock turns to a legal, for-profit company to find a liver for her dying sister, only to discover that the company finds its organ donors through less than scrupulous means With her younger sister dying from an Ebola-like virus, top forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock is under enough stress. Then she is called in for an opinion on the murder of wealthy William Arthur Warren. As Blalock and Los Angeles Homicide Lieutenant Jack Sinclair begin to investigate, they discover that Warren's newly transplanted liver was diseased. In due course, the skeleton of another murdered man is found in the hills above Donors International, which provided Warren's new liver. Joanna consults on this case, too, and soon attracts the attention of the killers. Goldberg (Deadly Care, LJ 3/1/96) has a solid story but fails to allow enough time for character development and abruptly catapults the reader into a shockingly stark climax. However, as a professor at UCLA's Medical Center, he certainly knows how to bring authenticity to his novels. The Joanna Blalock series is a good one to hand to readers of Patricia Cornwell; this new addition is recommended for most fiction collections.?Jo Ann Vicarel, Cleveland Heights-University Heights P.L., Ohio Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. In Goldberg's fourth medical thriller starring forensic pathologist Joanna Blalock, the devil is Donors International, a widespread organ-transplant company that harvests hearts, livers, and other organs from around the world to save the lives and health of those wealthy enough to pay its high prices. Memorial Hospital is the site of the unexplained deaths of two wealthy men who had received livers from DI. These livers become surrounded with cysts of unexplained origin, cysts that later serve as clues for the beautiful, quick-thinking Joanna. Jake Sinclair, a detective and Joanna's former lover, gets in the thick of the subsequent action, and a subplot involves Joanna's younger sister, Kate, an archaeologist brought back from a site in Guatemala with an almost fatal, unknown viral infection. Thanks to his clear style and storytelling ability, this is another bell ringer for Goldberg, who, teaching and practicing physician that he is, appends to his yarn a note pointing out how desperate the real organ-transplant situation currently is. William Beatty Tough police Lieutenant Jake Sinclair and pathologist Joanna Blalock (Deadly Care, 1996) team up again to excellent effect, tackling a tangled web of a case that pits them against both garden-variety murderers and predatory traffickers in human body parts. When heavy rainfall unearths a corpse buried ten years or more on a mountainside separating West Los Angeles from the San Fernando Valley, Jake catches the call. In need of forensic expertise, he appeals to his estranged lover Joanna for assistance. Despite troubles of her own, she agrees to help him on this and a recent killing that left a wealthy industrialist dead, apparently at the hands of a violence-prone intruder, in his Brentwood home. Although deeply concerned about the deteriorating health of younger sister Kate (suffering from a viral affliction contracted while on an archaeological expedition in Central America) and an alarming incidence of organ transplant fatalities at Memorial Hospital (her professional base), Joanna bears up, providing Jake with valuable clues on the anonymous remains and slain millionaire (whose treacherous trophy widow is subsequently slaughtered along with a small-time actor in a cheap motel room). Kate's liver soon begins to fail, and the distraught Joanna must rely on a concern called Donors International to supply an immediate replacement. While a legal enterprise apparently operating within the law, uncommonly prosperous DI proves a decidedly secretive organization, one that may have, yes, skeletons in its closets. Jake and Joanna eventually pierce the corporate veil to expose the horrific for-profit endeavors of Donors International. Before doing so, however, they must do personal battle with a mob-connected surgeon, excessively entrepreneurial scientists, and a villainous physician who takes a decidedly broad view of the phrase ``homegrown.'' Shock value and more from Goldberg, a clinical professor at UCLA Medical Center who has the anatomy of ingenious murders down pat. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Leonard Goldberg, M.D., is a clinical professor at the UCLA Medical Center.