Time Bomb was published by Bantam Books in 1990. A sniper opens fire on an elementary school in a diverse Los Angeles neighborhood, and though no children are killed (the sniper is shot by police), the community is traumatized. Alex is brought in to counsel the children and staff. As he works with the survivors, he discovers that the shooting was not random — it was connected to old racial conflicts surrounding the school’s integration decades earlier, and the “time bomb” of the title is the accumulated resentment of communities forced together without genuine reconciliation.
Collecting Time Bomb
First edition (Bantam Books, New York, 1990): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $25–$50
- Very good: $10–$25
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
The LA School System
Time Bomb is one of the few mystery novels to engage seriously with the politics of American public education. The school shooting (attempted, not completed) serves as the catalyst, but the real investigation concerns the racial and economic tensions beneath the surface of a neighbourhood in demographic transition. Kellerman draws on his clinical experience with traumatised children to portray the aftermath with clinical precision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Alex Delaware series deal with real psychological conditions? Yes. Kellerman is a clinical psychologist, and each novel features genuine psychological phenomena — PTSD, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, repressed memory, agoraphobia, sociopathy — depicted with professional accuracy rather than Hollywood sensationalism.
What makes Kellerman’s Los Angeles different from other crime novelists’ LA? Kellerman focuses on the canyons, hillsides, and residential neighbourhoods rather than the Hollywood/noir clichés. His LA is a city of therapists, professors, and middle-class families — the professional class that sustains the city’s infrastructure. The crimes emerge from this milieu rather than from the criminal underworld.