There’s a particular kind of dread that sets in when a case stops making sense — when the people responsible for chaos genuinely believe they’re the good guys. That’s the engine driving “Delusional,” the eighteenth entry in James Patterson and James O. Born’s Michael Bennett series, and it’s a sharper, stranger ride than the franchise’s title alone might suggest.
The story splits Bennett’s attention — and the reader’s — across two fronts. In New York, a string of bombings rattles the city with no clear motive and no obvious suspect. Meanwhile, out in Montana, Bennett and his partner Rob Trilling, a former Army sniper turned NYPD detective, are pulled into a case involving arson, stolen military munitions, and a small town outside Bozeman that’s suddenly very much on edge. As the two threads pull tighter, a common thread emerges: a loosely organized group convinced that its violence is a form of justice, that breaking things is really about making them better. The delusion of the title isn’t a single unhinged killer’s; it’s collective, almost ideological, which gives the book a more unsettling texture than a standard whodunit.
What works best here is the double engine of the collaboration itself. Born, a former Florida law enforcement officer and prolific crime novelist in his own right, grounds the procedural details — how bomb squads actually work a scene, how a stolen-munitions case gets jurisdictionally messy between local police, the Army, and the Bureau — while Patterson supplies the propulsion: short chapters, hard cuts between storylines, and cliffhangers timed to keep pages turning past a reasonable bedtime. Bennett remains an appealing anchor for it all, a family man trying to hold a sprawling household together while chasing people who think they’re righteous. Trilling gets more room to breathe in this installment too, and the Montana setting is a nice change of scenery from the series’ usual New York grid, giving Born’s rural-thriller instincts a chance to show.
Reaction to “Delusional” has generally tracked with expectations for a long-running series at this stage: readers who’ve stuck with Bennett for seventeen previous books tend to find this one satisfying, even a little livelier than some recent entries, thanks to the dual-location structure and the thematic hook of villains who don’t see themselves as villains. Some longtime fans of the earlier, grittier Bennett novels have noted the series has softened somewhat in tone over the years, trading some hard edges for breeziness, and a few have wished the two plotlines converged a bit more tightly by the end. But the consensus leans positive: this is regarded as one of the stronger recent Bennett outings, with the Patterson-Born partnership singled out as a good match of styles rather than a compromise between them.
It’s not a book that reinvents the procedural thriller, and it doesn’t try to be. What it offers instead is confident, well-oiled genre craftsmanship — a fast read that trusts its premise enough to let the “delusion” angle do some real thematic work rather than just supplying a title. For longtime Bennett readers, it’s an easy recommendation. For newcomers, it’s a perfectly good place to jump in, distinguished enough on its own to work as a standalone.
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