Thr3e by Ted Dekker

When I read this a couple of years ago, it had been a while since I'd read a Christian novel as full of surprising twists and with as satisfying an ending as Ted Dekker's Thr3e. With well-crafted characters and a fast-paced writing style that somehow keeps track of all that's going on in the story (and there is much, especially in the last third of the book), Thr3e exceeded my expectations in its use of compelling fiction to present convincing truth.

Kevin Parson, a recent convert to Christianity, is a seminary student with a very bizarre, perhaps questionable, past. He grapples with the natures of man: good versus evil. One day, after having some such conversation with one of his professors, he gets an unnerving phone call on his way home.

An unfamiliar man with a taunting, breathy voice who calls himself Slater, demands that Kevin confess his sin to the world. He is given three minutes to call the newspaper with his sin or else his car would be blown up. He is also given a riddle as a clue: What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls? The man hangs up, Kevin ditches the car, and three minutes later it blows up.

This begins a three-day hunt to track down Slater involving Kevin, Samantha Shear, his childhood friend and now an agent with the California Bureau of Investigation, and Jennifer Peters, FBI agent. More calls are made, more riddles are given, more demands for Kevin to come clean before the world with his sin. Each time the stakes are raised - first a car, then something bigger. The threat to human lives increases with every call.

Dekker's characters are intriguing - especially the personalities and relationship between Kevin and his childhood crush, Samantha - and the story is creative and well-paced (though it drags just a bit in the middle). Perhaps the only thing I didn't really like was Dekker's attempts at foreshadowing, which were actually more cruel than creative in their uses. It's one thing to have a character withhold something about his or her past from another character; it's an annoying thing when he or she does it directly to the reader.

Still the story is interesting enough to keep the reader hooked all the way to the end (and a good one it is at that) and Thr3e turned out to be a very nice surprise in the Christian fiction genre (just don't go to the website and play the promotional videos - cheeseball).