Far-fetched and creepy, the suspense thriller "BoneMan's Daughters" is set in Iraq during the recent war and in various Texas locales. It's well-presented in this audio CD version by actor Robert Petkoff.
There is depth to this novel beyond the typical thriller. The author clearly wants to provoke thought, and he does. There are strong spiritual overtones. Characters wonder about God, and how He allows certain situations to happen.
Ted Dekker's novel is gruesome in places -- too gruesome for my blood. It also relies on the author's ability to make the implausible happen to an extreme. There are too many miraculous escapes by far. Too many things happen that just wouldn't in real life, although the novel clearly isn't intended to be a fantasy. The resolution happens far too neatly, as if the author suddenly was tired of his plot and decided to have his sinister character behave in a way that's inconsistent with the way he behaves throughout the rest of the book. We keep being told that this is a thinking man's game between the hero and the bad guy, but everything ends up being resolved by brute force.
And at the least, "BoneMan's" needed an epilogue to tie up some loose ends. The female FBI agent was the most interesting character in the book, and the author seemed to be preparing her for a major role in the finale. Instead, she disappeared from the pages. Even her character seemed unrealistic to me -- far too sympathetic to the hero when he was thought to be the bad guy.
And yet, I'm grateful for this book, which made the miles fly by on a recent road trip. I actually half-regretted arriving at my destination during the first two legs of the trip because I would have to wait to find out what happened next. (I got over the regret very quickly.)
It was only on the third leg of the trip that what I perceived as the book's flaws started to override my interest.. By then, I at least had to find out how it came out.