Ted Dekker, Obsessed

Go buy this book and read it. You will love it.

Obsessed

Ted Dekker

Westbow, Feb 2005, $21.99

ISBN: 0849943736

In 1973 Hamburg, Germany, Gerhard Braun is upset because of an article in the American newspapers that refers to the five Stones of David. He has wanted the stones since they escaped his grasp during World War II because he believes that the female Jew who sucked his soul would finally die. His son Dekker could not care less about a concentration camp survivor or the stones, but knows that near the stones is the incriminating journal that lists the names of the "Elders" and the two hundred plus women they abused and killed. He wonders who this Rachel Spritzer is.

In Los Angeles, realtor Stephen Friedman lives the good life, but always wondered about his family who probably died during the war in Poland. Though obsessed to know what happened, he gave up a long time ago until now. His Rabbi informs him that Rachel Spritzer had branded her concentration camp newborn with half of a Stone of David; she could have been Stephen's mother. He digs into the life of Rachel, but is unaware that Roth is coming to clean up another of his father's mistakes as he has done for much of the last three decades.

This engaging suspense thriller rotates back and forth between 1973 and the War using the 1940s as a base for the 1970s cat and mouse game between the second generation offspring. The concentration camp scenes are graphic, compelling and realistically sadistic (not for everyone) leaving readers with empathy for the victims and a bad taste as the Elders use an organized sponsored ism to condone what they do to the Jews. This is a taut thriller in which the grounds for torture, rape and murder is Nazism.

Harriet Klausner