Dagger of the Mind

Dagger of the Mind is a speculative fiction book by Bob Shaw.

Dagger of the Mind, is a strange book. It takes off normally (well..) enough, Redpath is an epileptic living in a small english town. To make a buck, he participates in a series of experiments involving a new drug Compound 183. The book starts when Redpath, has a rather ugly vision of a man with the skin frayed from his face. This shocks Redpath rather badly and he decides that he wants out - as he suspects that Compound 183, is the reason for this strange vision.

Dagger of the Mind takes off from here. Redpath and the reader is in for a strange ride, you never really know whether the things that happens to Redpath are true or just dreams or if Redpaths visions are from some kind of reality or from some sick corner of Redpaths mind. The bad thing is that Redpath dosen't know either.

I started by writing that Dagger of the Mind is a strange book and what I mean by this is, that I can't figure out what Bob Shaw is trying to do with this book, I can't see what is that that he is trying to tell the reader, if anything. I can't figure if this is a horror story or a science fiction story gone evil. If you find a cheap copy of Dagger of the Mind in a used bookstore and feel like reading something out of the ordinary, I think that it will be worth the money.