I signed up – reluctantly – to read Ted Dekker. You see, I enjoyed some of his earlier books, then hit a point where they just weren’t my thing. Plenty of other people love them, but I had more than enough other books to invest my time in. Then ADAM arrived. Eight hours later, I had consumed the book after some careful ribbing from my husband. That’s okay, he’ll consume it just as quickly on his next flight.
ADAM: the story of an elusive serial killer whose victims die of unknown causes and the psychologist obsessed with catching him.
Daniel Clark is a FBI behavioral scientist who is famous for his well-reasoned arguments that religion is one of society’s greatest antagonists. He’s killed by a serial killer but resuscitated. He and a fellow FBI agent go to extremes to try to recapture his memories of the moments prior to death.
The book has marvelous pacing – I literally couldn’t put it down. The only good news was I didn’t have anything else I had to get done last night! And the characters have great conflict. The plot is filled with twists that I didn’t anticipate, yet fit the classic Dekker book mold.
Dekker uses magazine articles interspersed between chapters to fill in the gaps and make the serial killer more than a shadow. From page one you are learning the tragedy of his early years. It reminded me of the technique Brandilyn Collins used extremely well in her Kanner Lake series.
The book also deals with the reality of the supernatural realm and the American viewpoint that it doesn’t really exist. The Catholic church is the main religion highlighted, and it is handled in a positive light.
While I wouldn’t recommend this book for young teens, due to content (Near Death Experiences, Demon Possession, Exorcism), if you like a thriller with plenty of supernatural twists thrown in, then you will enjoy this book.
Synopsis:
He died once to stop the killer…now he’s dying again to save his wife.
FBI behavioral psychologist Daniel Clark has become famous for his well-articulated arguments that religion is one of society’s greatest antagonists. What Daniel doesn’t know is that his obsessive pursuit of a serial killer known only as “Eve” is about to end abruptly with an unexpected death-his own.
Twenty minutes later Daniel is resuscitated, only to be haunted by the loss of memory of the events immediately preceding his death.
Daniel becomes convinced that the only way to stop Eve is to recover those missing minutes during which he alone saw the killer’s face. And the only way to access them is to trigger his brain’s memory dump that occurs at the time of death by simulating his death again…and again. So begins a carefully researched psychological thriller which delves deep into the haunting realities of near-death experiences, demon possession, and the human psche.
New York Times best-selling author Ted Dekker unleashes his most riveting novel yet…an elusive serial killer whose victims die of unknown causes and the psychologist obsessed with catching him.