Date: August 16, 2025
Author: Ted Dekker
Title: Adam
I tried really really hard to like this book, I even gave it a second chance reading.
FBI agent, Daniel Clark, was running himself ragged trying to catch the serial killer known as Eve. Every month during the same part of the lunar cycle Eve was busy killing a new victim by infecting them with meningitis. It’s apparently a pretty awful death.
This story starts with Clark meeting his nemesis, Eve, head on and sustaining a bullet to his own head. After 20 minutes of trying to resuscitate him his new partner is finally able to bring him back to life.
The memory of who the killer is is buried under the barrage of chemicals that occurred at the time of his (near) death and now Clark was going to have to take drastic measures to remember. He’d have to have his partner kill him for long enough to trick his brain into thinking he was dying, then quick bring him back to life.
It was too much when Clark was going in for his second attempt at dying a third time in less then one week. I have a hard time believing the scene where he was driven around holding a needle in his own jugular, waiting to depress the plunger at the right moment. This is too tricky and needs a steady and precise hand. I just can’t believe he would be able to accurately do this himself while being jostled around in a driving car.
However, Mr. Dekker lost me long before these shenanigans occurred in the story line. Let’s jump back to the scenes of character’s going to sleep with duct tape fastened to their mouth. Not just one person in the story, but two persons had this same but not very brilliant idea. First off they were securing their mouths to keep from waking the neighbors with their nightmare screams. I call bs on this because of the extremely likely scenario of dying in their sleep. I don’t know how many times I’ve woken with a stuffed up nose. And deep and chaotic breathing usually accompanies nightmares. And tearing duct tape off your mouth every morning would not only be excruciating pain but wouldn’t the duct tape-ee be walking around with a permanent red and angry mark slashed across their face from loss of the epidermis due to the super sticky tape?
I could go on.
But I shan’t.
It just doesn’t make sense.
Hard pass.