The Defilers

by Deborah Gyapong

The novel is a fast-paced intense drama written in the genre of Frank Peretti and Dennis Lehane. The author, Deborah Waters Gyapong, is a professional writer with a journalism career that spans more than 20 years. In this story she applies all her skills to give us a twisting, suspenseful thriller, with great insight into the complexity and sinfulness of human nature and of the supernatural power of an all-good God. The story centres around Linda Donner, a Boston native, who travels north to rural Nova Scotia and takes a post as a policewoman with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in hopes of finding peace and balance in her life. Instead of a slower pace, things heat up as she becomes preoccupied with a controversial pastor she suspects is guilty of arson, murder and child abuse. She breaks into a church and finds the suspected pastor exorcising demons from a child. She believes she has caught him in the abuse act, but suddenly finds her own self powerless as she spirals into what appears to be a nervous breakdown. As she realizes she is fighting supernatural forces, she decides she must find God's help-a God she had stopped believing in after a priest seduced her when she was a teenager. The only person who seems able to help is her chief suspect, the pastor.

336 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2006

Reviews

[Diane Stephenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story. Deborah is a good storyteller and I read the book in about three days. This is a riveting story with a lot of twists and turns. Linda Donner, from Boston, moves to Nova Scotia with the RCMP to find a quieter way of life, but things really heat up when she suspects a pastor of arson and of abuse of a child. Demonic forces begin to assail her and she realized that the only place she can get help if from the pastor she suspects of abuse.