BoneMan's Daughters

BoneMan's Daughters by Ted Dekker Hodder & Stoughton HK$171

It was a coincidence that on the day I started reading Ted Dekker's horror thriller, news was breaking that a former US soldier had been convicted of murder and rape in Iraq.

Steven Green was found guilty of the 2006 rape and murder of an Iraqi teenager and of the killing of her family. Prosecutors said Green was the ringleader of a group that raped and killed 14-year-old Abeer Kassem Hamza al-Janabi and murdered her parents and five-year-old sister. Three other ex-soldiers had already been sentenced to life in prison.

It was a coincidence because BoneMan's Daughters opens with intelligence expert Ryan Evans being hijacked during a tour of duty in Iraq and forced by Iraqi father turned terrorist, Khalid, to face the horror that US troops have inflicted on the civilian population - Khalid's wife and child died when their home was bombed. He gives Evans a choice: reveal your wife and daughter's address or I will kill an innocent boy in front of you. 'I don't have a building to drop on him so I'm going to break his bones with a hammer ... just as you killed my wife and my child one year ago to this day,' he tells Evans.

Khalid's gruesome mode of murder is based on a US serial killer dubbed 'BoneMan', who killed seven teenage girls by breaking their bones without cutting their skin. Although caught and jailed, he is about to be released on a technicality, with evidence that the district attorney planted evidence.

BoneMan has already affected Evans' life to a certain extent. One of his victims was a classmate of his daughter Bethany and the district attorney involved in the case is dating his estranged wife Celine. However, he could not possibly foresee the horror to come as he faces Khalid's accusations.

Evans is eventually rescued but is so emotionally scarred by his ordeal he is ruled unfit for duty. He returns to the US to try a fresh start, much to the consternation of Celine and Bethany, who have become used to life without husband and father.

There are multiple themes in the novel - the evil that people do to each other being the most obvious - and Dekker's comparison of criminal and military violence goes to the heart of human duplicity. What is the difference between breaking bones in a war and in civil society? The rationale changes, the horror doesn't. But there are metaphysical themes too. Dekker wrote a number of Christian and spiritual thrillers early in his career and there is more than an element of Christian mythology in this.

The concept of fatherhood is central. Evans questions his responsibilities towards Bethany while BoneMan, who calls himself Lucifer, considers himself the 'father' of his victims. And, of course, everyone from a psychopathic killer to the US marines has God on their side.

The book left me praying for a secular world.