Obsessed by Ted Dekker

Stephen Friedman has an obsession-he is obsessed with finding the Stones of David, smooth stones that were allegedly used by David to defeat Goliath. As a Jew, he feels the need to retrieve them before they fall into the wrong hands. When they surface in a dead widow's apartment nearby, he tries many different methods to enter the apartment before a Nazi group can find them.

In the past, his mother tries to survive a spin off Holocaust camp while carrying him inside of her. The Nazi in charge has his own methods of how to eliminate the apprehended females residing there. She only hopes that her baby will survive his antics.

The parallel stories between the past and the present (or the nearer past, since they take place in 1943 and 1975) make the story longer and more interesting. The idea of a rebel Nazi camp is ingenious and highly probable.

Stephen's attempts to enter the apartment are downright comical, a rare feat for Ted Dekker. Burning holes through walls and dressing up as a woman are only two of his attempts. Dekker uses a satirical writing style to demonstrate what people will do for what they are obsessed with. This is very interesting because he has never tried anything like this before.

These failed attempts reflect upon Stephen's good personality development. This is also a rare feat for Ted Dekker, since he doesn't usually develop characters with personalities. This makes the book not even seems like Dekker at times, even though Stephen is the only good character.

Unfortunately, the last one hundred pages were like a completely different book to me. In the end, it turned into an average suspense book with an unrealistic location of a missing person, a last minute romance, a showdown, a hostage scene, a last minute conversion, and two characters who come back from the dead. All of these pieces of Literary Trash ruin an otherwise Elite book.

It's very disappointing to read a book like this. Dekker gets your hopes up with so many good things at the beginning, and in the end, he turns it into cheap suspense.

3 stars