Rating: [rate 4.0]

Do you believe in evil?

In the mind of FBI behavioral psychologist Daniel Clark, there is no Good and no Evil. All that possesses him is the pursuit of the serial killer known as ‘Eve’. A pursuit that will lead Daniel to his own death.

But he is miraculously resuscitated — twenty-one minutes after flatlining — and it soon becomes clear that the only way to stop Eve is to recover those missing minutes by dying…again.

Daniel’s pursuit of Eve descends deeper and darker than ever before. Soon — in circumstances he could never have imagined — he will find himself re-evaluating everything he ever believed.

It’s been a long time since I have read a Ted Dekker book, and I have been eyeing this one ever since I saw it at National Bookstore. When I saw the smaller print (the one above with the bright green back cover), I immediately snatched it up.

I have read a couple of reviews of this book, and most of them said something about this being Ted Dekker’s darkest work yet, and that some slept with their lights on, so I was kind of wary about this. Somewhere halfway into the book, I started wondering if all those dark stuff is really some kind of hype. Even when I finally finished it (more to the ending later), I wasn’t particularly stunned.

Until last night. I’m not saying something supernatural happened, but I woke up in the middle of the night and the first thing that came into mind was the last scene in the book…and boy was I suddenly terrified. I had to think of other thoughts fast, keeping my eyes closed so I won’t imagine anything in the room.

Talk about haunting.

In a way that’s how this book was — haunting. I described it first as disturbing, but I realized haunting is the better word. The story was flawless, as far as I’m concerned: the story — both the newspaper articles and the actual story — are tightly woven together, and the terminologies seemed authentic as far as my knowledge was concerned. In fact, it kind of felt like I was reading a novelized CSI episode with all the mention of AFIS, CODIS and all the protocol they followed. I even learned some new things that I somehow never picked up in the CSI episodes I’ve watched, like did you know that when they say ventricular fibrillation, it meant heart attack? And that electric shock thing with paddles is called a defibrillator?

But I digress. What I liked about this book was how Dekker managed to connect the physical/scientific world of crime solving with the spiritual aspect. At first I had a hard time trying to connect them when it was finally brought up — perhaps it was my exposure to all those CSI episodes that followed the motivations and the scientific stuff made me numb to thinking about the faith aspect — but after some time, it made sense. I remembered that there’s the body and the soul, and Dekker merges the soul aspect here in a creepy albeit effective way. He manages to tie everything effectively in the first question of the blurb: do you believe in evil? Because evil exists, and it’s not something you can hide from in locked doors or fence installation can keep away.

As always, the ending brought a little twist that I really didn’t expect, so props to that too. Nothing is as surprising as Thr3e‘s ending, though. ;)

My only gripe about this book is how dark it was. Yes, it’s one of the “good” aspects of this one, but it’s definitely not for someone who’s early in his/her Christian walk. It’s not for teens, for sure, because the themes are too heavy and the ending didn’t have a very solid resolution, just the solving of the case. It presents a side of our spiritual life that can be scary to some people if not understood properly.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s a good book. Just make sure you’re ready for its after-effects. :)

You will learn that evil tends to target those who are least suspicious of its power. (Ted Dekker)