The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker

FBI Special agent Brad Raines is facing his toughest case yet. A Denver serial killer has killed four beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each crime scene, and he’s picking up his pace. Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellness and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill individuals whose are extraordinarily gifted.

It’s there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person’s life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise’s help. In an effort to win her trust, he befriends this strange young woman and begins to see in her qualities that most ‘sane people’ sorely lack. Gradually, he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls…or inside.

As the Bride Collector picks up the pace-and volume-of his gruesome crucifixions, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector’s next target.

The FBI believes that the killer plans to murder seven women. Can Paradise help before it’s too late?

I have read Ted Decker’s books for years and then it seems like the last few years while I have been a faithful “purchaser” they have remained on my shelves unread.  Why, you may ask?  Well, I have no profound reason other than lack of time, commitment to other books, and that think called life that sometimes gets in the way….  😉

SO….. I was thrilled to be a part of this tour for Ted’s new book, The Bride Collector.  My hope was this book would  remind me of all the things I appreciate about Ted’s writing and cause other Decker books to come flying off my book shelves in rapid formation.

On to the verdict….

The Bride Collector starts with me, starring in the role of “Reader”, going down a path of information gathering.  We begin with collecting  background info on the who, the what, and the where’s, in the book.  Don’t despair!  This is good detective work!  Besides, you want to enjoy this beginning pace of the book…. because…… much like a rollercoaster slowly… click… clacking… it’s… way… to… the…  top….

It doesn’t stay that way for long and suddenly you are rushing downward, hands in the air (and quite possibly screaming) as you plunge into the pages of this storyline…. page by page, flying through the mind of a serial killer who is taking the lives of beautiful women believing it is his calling to find the Bride of God.  A bridal veil is all that is left on the crime scenes leaving a very frustrated FBI as they work hard to put a stop to the madness.

Special Agent Brad Raines, is doing everything he can to track down this killer and put a stop to the terror.  He even goes as far as to seek help from the mental patients in a home that Brad feels may have at one time been associated with this man they call the Bride Collector.

“But wait, Sheila…. Isn’t this book a Christian Fiction read?  It seems so dark….”

It is a Christian Fiction read and that actually makes it all the more intriguing to me.  I have always had an enjoyment for  the mystery/suspense genre and Ted Dekker is known for this style.  While their is murder in the book, it is not gory or graphic.  Ted does have a message in every book and  how he gets to that message is amazing in itself.

The Bride Collector had plenty of the twists and turns along the way that I enjoy in his books.  Having read and enjoyed this one,  I am now looking at his other works that are waiting patiently on my shelf….

Ted Dekker (born October 24, 1962) is a New York Times best-selling author of more than twenty novels. He is best known for stories which could be broadly described as suspense thrillers with major twists and unforgettable characters, though he has also made a name for himself among fantasy fans.

Dekker was born to missionaries who lived among the head hunter tribes of Indonesia. Because his parents’ work often included extended periods of time away from their children, Dekker describes his early life in a culture to which he was a stranger as both fascinating and lonely. It is this unique upbringing that forced him to rely on his own imagination to create a world in which he belonged.

Early in his career he wrote a number of spiritual thrillers and his novels were lumped in with ‘Christian Fiction’ a surprisingly large category. His later novels are a mix of mainstream novels such as Adam, Thr3e, Skin, Obsessed and BoneMan’s Daughters, and Fantasy thrillers that metaphorically explore faith. Best known among these is his Circle Series: Green, Black, Red, White and The Paradise Books: Showdown, Saint, and Sinner.

I received my review copy from Hachette Book Group