Into the Fire

BoneMan’s Daughters

I’ve now read three of Ted Dekker’s novels: Adam, Kiss, and BoneMan’s Daughters. Both Adam and Kiss have been reviewed here, and although Kiss was entertaining and the tamest of the three, I have to admit Adam is my favorite. Those of you who’ve read the novel or my review of it realize the story isn’t for the faint-hearted. May I say BoneMan’s Daughters is a step farther into the process of psychological torment and the breaking down of the human soul? If you can’t stomach the gruesome description of premeditated physical violence in order to accomplish the complete vanquishing of a human being, I can’t recommend this novel to you.

Those of us who’ve met the Lord Jesus Christ must admit that in our sinful states, we are no better than the worst of mankind. We are sinners. Some of us face temptations to do incredible evil and succumb to it without much fight while others of us shun all kinds of evil but surrender to “societal sin” such as fornication, occasional drunkenness, white lies, etc. We reconcile and justify our disobedience by telling ourselves we’re not killers or drug dealers, for heaven’s sake!

In BoneMan’s Daughters we are presented with an elite and meticulous serial killer of young women who has chosen an unusual and especially torturous way of murdering them. The man supposedly responsible for these heinous crimes is being released from jail because there is reason to believe he’s been wrongly incarcerated. The smug DA who prosecuted him is furious and hell-bent to find a way to put him back in jail, but the FBI investigator who spent two years on the case suspects the man is not the BoneMan, and what her gut is telling her is right.

Meanwhile in Iraq, naval intelligence officer Captain Ryan Evans gets captured by insurgents led by a man named Khalid who straps the captain to a chair and posts pictures of Khalid’s dead children in war rubble, referred to as collateral damage. Khalid seems to know more about Captain Evans’ family than he rightfully should and keeps posing the question, “What would the captain do if the children in the picture belonged to him?”

Trained to analyze and compartmentalize, the methodical Captain Evans does all he can to maintain control, to speak reasonably, anything to find an advantage. But Khalid decides to torture the captain in an unspeakable way, and when the captain is finally able to escape, there are seven dead young people in the room with him. Next time we see him, he is in the hospital receiving psychiatric treatment and preparing for release to go home to try to recover.

It’s too late to find relief from his family. Back in the BoneMan’s territory his wife is smitten with the arrogant DA and wants a divorce, and his modeling 16 year old adopted daughter has written him off as having abandoned her for his military career. He is completely shattered as a person, changed in ways few can understand.

The first part of this novel is distinctly broken into two separate accounts, that of Captain Evans in Iraq and that of his hometown where the BoneMan anguish is exploding again with the release of a man everyone thought was the serial killer. We know these two stories will eventually intersect, but at first it’s like reading two separate novels at the same time, and I found it a bit distracting.

There were moments in this novel where I felt I was being given Ted’s opinions regarding war in general, the relationship of average people to sick killers, and how horrendous situations produce the best and the worst in individuals, which, while true, in this story came to an extreme conclusion. Christian authors are often accused of writing preachy literature when areas of the gospel are presented within a story. I don’t know if it was the author’s intent in BoneMan’s Daughters, but there seemed to be a few morality or rather immorality messages here about each of the aforementioned points, and for me it came off as a bit preachy—like the story exemplifies how a broken individual is capable of committing the same scenarios as an individual who has chosen to embrace evil, and how the extremes of war might negate the necessity for the fight for freedom.

Probably the main difficulty I had with the story is that the only characters I truly liked were the FBI agent Ricki and probably Father Hortense. With the exception of the priest/licensed psychiatrist, Father Hortense, assigned to Captain Evans’ follow up care, these are all godless characters with an antagonist who prefers to be called Satan over his given name or the BoneMan nickname. The rather limited attempt to interject God and prayer into the mix felt forced, and as a result misleading. There was no reliance whatsoever upon God’s help other than a few lame prayers.

Captain Evans seems aloof and distant by description and conduct. His soon-to-be ex-wife is narcissistic and without character. His 16 year old daughter feels completely abandoned by her military father and alienated from her mother but has to this point allowed her mother’s dream for her to override any she might have of her own which produces a fatalistic philosopher in the girl and one who seems stronger than she should be. BoneMan is a bona fide sicko, the typical abused-by-his-mother weirdo with totally creepy quirks and methods for stalking and killing.

The high point for me was the twist near the end. I didn’t see it coming, and it was perfect. The cover is excellent, alluding to the isolation of the crimes and of the featured individuals in the story.

I’m afraid the low points overcame the high points for me this time. The incriminations against the captain, although logical from the law’s point of view, were prolonged and annoying. The depths to which the captain fell were painful to read, both stunning and confusing at times which I realize was the intent, but in the end the reactions to his experiences didn’t evoke real sympathy from me, and the concluding scene symbolized nothing but complete character failure to me. A couple of the murders toward the end seemed like (forgive the pun here) overkill and slightly out of sync with the established character of the antagonist.

I’ve enjoyed Ted Dekker’s writing in both Adam and Kiss because it’s unobtrusive, clear-cut, and imaginative. I appreciate his ability to build tension, even fear, as a story progresses. His villains are depraved individuals, some more sympathetic than others, and his protagonists bear wounds and scars and demonstrate personal failings. In this novel I couldn’t be sure what his intentions were, and I didn’t care for his deductions represented by some of his characters’ thoughts and actions. And, as I mentioned earlier, God just seemed to be shoved into the evil mess almost as an aside and certainly not represented with the care and dedication given to Satan and his representation in this story, leaving a false and incomplete picture of who God is.

Please don’t take this in the wrong way, but for those readers who don’t care about looking beneath the surface for any possible author agendas or themes and who enjoy the terror of stories about wicked people perpetrating heinous crimes while being pursued, BoneMan’s Daughters is the novel for you.

To be completely fair to Ted, you can read his thoughts and assessments of the story and its potential readers here: http://www.teddekker.com/2009/03/19/why-we-fear-violence/. While I can understand his aim, I’m just not sure he hit the bulls-eye.

Father, thank you for the talents and gifts you’ve given in abundance, for the imaginations of your people, and their intents to serve you. Please continue to bless Ted Dekker as he aims to serve you with his writing. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.