“Delusion in Death” by J. D. Robb – The Hallucinogenic Murderer

When most of us thing of the enemies which can hurt us the most, we generally think of humans with either guns or briefcases. However, there are infinitely more devastating weapons in this world, some of which are naked to the invisible eye... airborne chemicals. 

In Delusion in Death by J. D. Robb, lieutenant Eve Dallas is called to a scene in a quaint downtown bar, where eight people lay dead. After interrogating the still-paranoid witnesses, she concludes that the whole bar had drinks spiked with some kind of potent hallucinogenic substance, which caused a murderous twelve minutes of mayhem. 

However, she still has to find out who did it, and more importantly, prevent that person from carrying on with their work. The worst part is another outbreak can take place literally anytime and anywhere, and there are no prevention methods, for the thing is airborne.

Part of the fun of reading Delusion in Death is watching the hero struggle against the type of enemy we all dread to face: the invisible kind that can get inside of you and drive you crazy, with there being nothing you can really do about it. 

The constant threat creates a suspenseful atmosphere that remains throughout the entire story; you feel that there are important things at stake here, and the only for Eve to win this (a loosely-used term considering eight people died already) is to rush in and find the one responsible. It’s basically a race against time with a palpable sense of doom.

The one part about the book which I did not find to be very remarkable were the characters themselves. Save for Eve, most of them felt either re-hashed or like two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Yes, there is depth to the more important characters, but in the end, they are far from being the author’s focus. 

This is the kind of you book you can read while having your mind turned off, and if you feel like spending an afternoon or two immersed in a cat-and-mouse game between a brilliant detective and a maniac, then I’d definitely recommend you give this book a try.

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Nora Roberts Personal site Nora Roberts is an American author who has more than 200 romance novels under her name, and is known to use the pen names J. D. Robb, Jill March and Sarah Hardesty. She was the first inductee into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, and has seen prizes awarded to her as if they rained from the sky, having a total of over 25 in the form of Quill, RITA and Gold Medallion awards. Some of her better-known works include Night Shift, Born in Ice, and Angels Fall.