A Review of Adam by Ted Dekker

Thomas Nelson Publishing

 It takes an obsessive mind to know one. And Daniel Clark knows the elusive killer he’s been stalking.

He’s devoted every waking minute as a profiler to find the serial killer known only as Eve. He’s pored over the crime scenes of sixteen young women who died mysterious deaths, all in underground basements or caverns. He’s delved into the killer’s head and puzzled over the twisted religious overtones of the killings.

What Daniel can’t possibly know is that he will be Eve’s next victim. He will be the killer’s first Adam. After sixteen hopeless months, the case takes a drastic turn on a very dark night when Daniel is shot and left for dead.

Resuscitated after twenty minutes of clinical death, Daniel finds himself haunted by the experience. He knows he’s seen the killer’s face, but the trauma of dying has obscured the memory and left him with crushing panic attacks. Nothing–not even desperate, dangerous attempts to reexperience his own death–seems to bring him closer to finding the killer.

Then Eve strikes again, much closer to home. And Daniel’s obsession explodes into a battle for his life . . . his sanity . . . his very soul.

This is a Book to 

RAVE

Adam is a journey into a world we’d rather not dive into.  A fictional exploration of the presence of evil that impacts our lives. It gives an interesting look at Behavioral Psychology and how the FBI uses it to track and stop serial killers, which keeps the momentum of the novel on high speed. You also get a taste of  some  popular TV shows  such as CSI and Criminal Minds.

The charcters  in the novel and their flaws make the characters as real as anyone you know, and the curiousity of life and death and the battle between good and evil are evident on every page. 

I would have liked the story to have a stronger spiritual forces of good combatting against the  antagonist in the novel. But Dekker does an amazing job of showing how belief and temptation is a slippery slope. One other thing I was not expecting was the excerpts from Crime Today Magazine’s narrative account Man of Sorrow: Journey into Darkenss by Anne Rudolph. The excerpts do give the background to explain the serial killers motives, which almost takes away from the antagonist’s actions and motives.

Even though the spiritual aspects Dekker touches on could have been expanded this book is a thrilling read. I would recommend the Exclusive Christian Retail Edition for an extra chapter and a very interesting converstation between Dekker and author John Eldredge.