Bride Collector [Paperback]

Ted Dekker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2010

FBI Special Agent Brad Raines is facing his toughest case yet. A Denver serial killer has killed four beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each crime scene, and he's picking up his pace. Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellbeing and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill individuals who are extraordinarily gifted.It's there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person's life when she touches the dead body.In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise's help. In an effort to win her trust, he befriends this strange young woman and begins to see in her qualities that most 'sane people' sorely lack. Gradually, he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls...or inside.As the Bride Collector increases the pace and volume of his gruesome crucifixions, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector's next target. The FBI believes that the killer plans to murder seven women. Can Paradise help before it's too late?

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Ted Dekker is a true master of thrillers, and this is his best.' -- Nelson DeMille 'It doesn't just get under your skin. It crawls there, nests, and raises its head with a bitter tug, as if it's living within you.' -- Brad Meltzer '...a tour-de-force of suspense that demands to be read in one sitting.' -- James Rollins

About the Author

TED DEKKER is a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty novels with a total of more than 3 million books in print. He is known for thrillers that combine adrenaline-laced plots with incredible confrontations between good and evil.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Hodder Hb (May 6, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340964987
• ISBN-13: 978-0340964989
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (208 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,961,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Scary!, February 26, 2010

By 

P. B. Sharp (NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bride Collector (Hardcover)

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Taut and well written, this is a suspenseful psychological novel. A serial killer in Denver captures beautiful women and impales them by gluing them to a wall, one woman in each of seven different sordid locations, each woman dressed in a bridal veil. Of course they are all beautiful and they are all young. The killer leaves no DNA, no fingerprints, no tire tracks, nothing that investigators can use to discover his identity. But we the readers find out who he is early in the novel, a brilliant, supremely confident schizophrenic, gloating at his success and thumbing his nose at the authorities who can't catch him.

Special Investigator Brad Raines of the FBI thinks the killer is in love with his victims, creating a supreme sacrifice, an offering to the gods, of sorts, a macabre expression of love. But the deaths fuel the killer to continue his rampage, like a vampire feasting off the blood of his hapless prey. But it takes a psychotic to know one and off the investigators go to an institution for the insane, but an institution limited only to insane persons of high intelligence, (Remember Hannibal Lecter?)

The institution is filled with zany characters but the most notable is Paradise, a young woman who had suffered severe emotional trauma and who is reported to be able to touch a murdered person and name the killer by picking up some sort of vibes via osmosis. She hears voices and sees ghosts but nevertheless, you kind of get the feeling the real crazy people and killers are not in the institution, they are outside it and among us.

Brad has a premonition. He wants Paradise to view body number five, Melissa. But Paradise won't leave the asylum, she is afraid of the outside world. So the mountain must go to Muhammad. The body is taken to Paradise at the asylum. On the gurney the sheet is pulled back revealing the dead girl's face. And Paradise, trembling, touches the cold cheek. And then... and then....

I'm not going to tell you anything more because I don't want to inject any spoilers; it's almost impossible to discuss the plot without giving something away. Suffice it to say I was scared to go to bed!

P.S. I am adding this postscript a couple of days after I posted the original review. The reason is, I've thought a great deal about the character "Paradise Founder." Why she is named Paradise is explained in the book. But her first and last names together are an allusion to a question asked of epic poet John Milton:

"Thou hast said much of paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of paradise found?"

The killer in the novel mentions Milton's "Paradise Lost" in one of the cryptic messages he leaves at the murder scenes. Paradise Founder is quite an appropriate name. Anyway, this strange little girl upstages hero Brad Raines.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A psychological thriller that I enjoyed..., March 17, 2010

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bride Collector (Hardcover)

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As part of the Amazon Vine review program, I recently selected the book The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker as one of my review items. I've not had the opportunity to read any of Dekker's works before, and the psychological thriller sounded like a decent way to spend a few evenings. Overall, the book was enjoyable. I'd have liked it to be a bit tighter in places where the action seemed to drag, but there were definitely enough characters to keep my interest.

Brad Raines is an FBI special agent who tends to end up with very complex and gruesome murder cases. In this instance, he's responsible for someone who is abducting women, gluing their naked bodies to the wall, placing a wedding veil on their heads, and letting them bleed out through two holes drilled in their heels. Definitely not your run-of-the-mill murderer... The killer's pace is accelerating, and he's not leaving anything behind in the way of forensic evidence that can be used to track him down. It's only once he starts leaving notes behind for Raines that there's any sort of trail to follow. And the trail is quite warped. He is presenting these women to God, and is working up to his perfect offering. In desperation, Raines turns to a patient who is living in an institution for the mentally ill. She is supposedly able to touch a body and see the event that killed the person. Raines isn't all that open to the possibility, but he has little else to go on. And when events start getting extremely personal and close to home, Raines is forced to confront his own demons along with those of others in order to stop the killer and save the ones he loves.

The way the story is structured, you know who the murderer is right off. The story bounces back and forth between the killer and Raines, so the payoff isn't the "who dun it" resolution at the end. Instead, it's more along the lines of seeing whether Raines will be able to stop him before he can claim his final victim. Dekker also touches on issues such as the mentally ill, spirituality, abuse, and a few other themes that will allow the reader to ponder such topics if they so choose. In the middle of the story, things slow down a bit, and it seems as if we're just killing time before the end game comes into play. I also felt as if some of the characters, especially Nikki Holden, were less developed than I would have expected. It may be that this isn't the first novel with the Raines character, in which case I could understand it. But I still felt as if I was missing something in terms of the depth of some of the people...

I'd have no problems heading over to the library and starting to catch up on some prior Dekker novels. The Bride Collector was worth reading, and if his other novels are as good as this one, I'd enjoy them.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engaging murder mystery, April 13, 2010

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a - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Bride Collector (Hardcover)

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While obviously a murder mystery--even if one were to solely judge a book by its cover--I was surprised to find that Dekker takes the reader on a journey seldom visited in novels, and certainly not in real life, at least by most people. Dekker can be extremely descriptive, so be prepared for minute details, plus the point of view jumps from character to character, allowing deeper insight into each character without ever knowing the entire story. These are observations, not criticisms, because I really enjoyed this novel. I was further surprised when the murderer was revealed early on, and I often asked myself what more the author could possibly write, and yet I was never disappointed until I neared the end and felt he could, well, continue writing more. It was definitely a page-turner as others have described, and like many, I hated to put down (but you have to sleep sometime, right?).