Customer Reviews

TIME BOMB.

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I got Time Bomb for Christmas and I could not put it down, it was so good, I would stay up late, not wanting to stop. Jonathan Kellerman is the master of psyschological thrillers. Here is a little about the story.

When Alex Delaware gets a call from his friend, LAPD homide detective, Milo Sturgis, he is asked to come down to a school which as been targeted by a sniper, and help the kids. When he gets there, he finds that the details are sketchy and all that he learns is that the sniper has been killed without hurting anyone. Milo tells him that the sniper was a girl, nonviolent, and had mental difficulties. Now, Alex has to figure out, was the sniper a killer, or just another victim?

towards the final detonation! A sniper has just opened fire on a school playground, creating trauma and mayhem. She was shot to death before she could claim any child casualties.

She? Yes. The mysterious woman who opened fire a propos of nothing had secrets begging to be revealed. Dr. Delaware and his sidekick Officer Sturgis travel down some seedy side streets before they unmask the sniper's identity and reason for opening fire. The attacker's father enlists the aid of the duo, requesting that they do a psychological portrait of his slain daughter. As the men delve deeper into their work, they uncover a Pandora's box of ugly secrets and are left with the question of who was REALLY a victim the day of the shooting?

On the plus side, Alex develops a new romantic partner, principal Linda Overstreet. A tough Southwesterner, she provides more class than Robin ever did. She also appears to be much brighter. She has an interesting psychological background including "cops and music." It would have been wonderful if Robin had been ushered out the door for good.

Time Bomb's plot is very well assembled, all the facts fall together amazingly. Nothing from the sleeve, pure logic. The story evolves thrillingly and I found myself reading at 4am. Delaware is so real, so ordinary, you get to know him well and feel with him. Kellerman's detailed descriptive adds to the atmosphere and gives a feeling of being standing right there. What I haven't been able to do is give a face to Milo Sturgis, though he is a wonderful character. This is the 5th Kellerman book I read, and definitely look forward to reading the rest.

I've enjoyed other Jonathan Kellerman novels, but I thought TIME BOMB was a real dud. This book is probably twice as long as it needs to be, with endless descriptions and ruminations that add nothing to the plot. Put simply, TIME BOMB is one of those novels that could have used a good editor. This might have been a decent novel if it was 150 pages shorter.

Even worse, there's very little genuine suspense; Alex Delaware faces no danger in this story until maybe the last 80 pages of the book. The plot is also too convulted, to the point of straining credulity. The identities and schemes of the book's villains, for example, are downright ridiculous.

In the end, this novel is a slow-paced bore. In particular, the dialogue in TIME BOMB is very poor and stilted -- too many conversations where characters give long, pretentious speeches instead of talking like real people. I also thought that Delaware came across as pompous and arrogant in many of these scenes, too much of a know-it-all for my tastes.

Kellerman's a very decent writer, but his plotting skills are highly uneven. If you've never tried him before, my advice is to read his earlier novels such as WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS, SILENT PARTNER and OVER THE EDGE. Those novels have better structured plots, and are far more enjoyable reads.

Crimes committed by misguided souls is a fertile ground for the psychiatrist turned detective, Dr. Alex Delaware. In this particular story he involves himself with modern day Nazis who have the maturity of six year olds and the criminal mind of Count Dracula combined with racism doomed for failure. That's cliche of modern writers, when they depict the evil and it has become repetetively boring. However, the author uses fascinating English, is quite resourceful with words. The most colorful character is the narcistic father of the girl with the rifle in the schoolyard. Was the father in his self absorption and mad obsessions with technology the cause of the ticking timebomb?

This is the first Jonathan Kellerman thriller I've read. It seemed to bog down pretty early and I was not captivated by the hero, Alex Delaware, as he was trying to help traumatized kids while several mysteries swirled around him. There's a lot of dark historical events in the hero's research into key figures in the mystery. No one turned out to be an escaped Nazi living in Argentina, but for a while you wonder.

Later, there are many twists which I won't reveal. The problem is they are not convincing. One twist in particular is absolutely unbelievable in the real world since 1900.

The book has a retro feel as the characters keep racing to make that call on a land line -- sometimes a tapped land line. No cell phones back in the day.

Frankly, too, the book was pretty darn steamy -- probably a page-turner device. Of course, that torrid relationship has a "the lady or the tiger" ending.

I had just raced through two Michael Connelly thrillers which were faster moving -- The Lincoln Lawyer and his earlier Echo Park (Harry Bosch)

Probably reading the involving Connelly novels right before this set the bar a little too high. (And I happened to read this particular title; it may well be one of Kellerman's less inspired pieces, whereas I've heard that Echo Park is one of Connelly's best.)

Kellerman constructs a plot twist with lots of verbiage and back story, hoping you'll buy into it. Connelly just throws surprises at you effortlessly. While it may seem K's method will work better, it doesn't.

I hope reading a more current Kellerman work will be more satisfying.

I've read all of the Alex Delaware novels. I'd have to say this one is probably the least interesting of all. It wasn't a bad book - just not up to my expectations.

On my way to the theater I had some time to kill. I stopped in the Wal-mart and browsed their bargain bin of books. The price I paid for Time Bomb was a steal. I have read everything by the author since and have started reading his wife's works also. Alex Delaware is an original, a reluctant detective who happens to be a brilliant child psychologist. His friend Milo goes against all the stereotypes as a macho gay detective who isn't afraid to buck the system in the name of justice. The ending was totally unexpected but plausible. Kellerman has a winner with his series. I am currently reading The Clinic

I wanted to know more about this book and seem to have encountered reviewers who have treated this as a homework assignment. One assumes you have read the book, it is not necessary to go into extreme detail and it is really in poor taste to GIVE AWAY THE PLOT in your review as was the case with one reviewer's comments. Most unfortunate.

The word boring would be a real understatement, I found myself flipping thru as many pages as I read. Just hoping something interesting would FINALLY happen. But no, endless pages of useless information and description, really bad.
Waste of money and time.