BoneMan's Daughters: Review

I just finished reading BoneMan's Daughters, by Ted Dekker. Dekker is a Christian author who writes suspenseful thrillers. I read a few of his other works when I was growing up, though I don't entirely remember all of them. Dekker always had the reputation of being a weird and disturbing writer, someone who was always controversial within the Christian community. That, of course, was why I liked him as a kid; he was one of the "cool" authors. So, I was interested to revisit him and consider the work from my more recent perspective.

Summary (No Spoilers)

BoneMan's Daughters is a book about a failed father who has become estranged from his wife and his daughter. This is because of a long past of neglect, after putting his career as an intelligence officer before his family. But, his attitude changes, and he wants to fix things. Juxtaposed with this is the BoneMan, a serial killer about to be released, who sees himself as a perfect father and is looking for a perfect daughter to fill his life. When the girls he kidnaps fail to live up to his standards, he proceeds to break their bones until they die, meticulously ensuring that he does not break their skin. What follows is a disturbing account of a serial killer swinging back into action, being chased by our protagonist.

Strides (Spoilers)

The first thing I can say about this book is that it stuck with me. Unlike the last book I read, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, this book remained on my mind for a day or two after reading. In particular, I was interested in the character's plights and their future past the end of the book. In fact, I am honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book, given the technical failings that I generally associate with it. I think a lot of this has to do with the premise being father/daughter relationships. I'm not really sure why that resonates with me, but I guess it does.

As for the writing, I rather enjoyed the pacing of the story and the speed at which it unfolded. This thriller was much better written than The Reversal, which is still fresh in my mind. Whenever I picked up the book, I never had to slog through, instead struggling to find places to stop. Many readers understand the feeling of wanting to take a break and stretch or eat, but then you get done with the chapter and want to read the next one, and then the next. This was one of those books.

The book also had a few unexpected twists. I think the most interesting twist is when Ryan fails to break ten of Burt's bones and is taken to the police. I genuinely believed that he would get away by the skin of his teeth. This belief persisted even as the trap snapped ever closer in. I kept thinking Dekker would pull the rug out and show Ryan getting away, but he doesn't. Once this happened, I was left to wonder where the story could go from here. He then sets up potential plot directions that we've seen time and time again and ends up going a different direction when Ryan doesn't make a deal with the authorities, and instead, he is forced to break out and handle the situation on his own. While I doubt all of this is possible, strictly speaking, Dekker does a very good job convincing a layperson that these circumstances are plausible.

A character I rather liked was the BoneMan, himself. I think Dekker does a good job characterizing him by giving him weird quirks that make him stand out. In particular, the character is obsessed with his image and the purity of his skin, rubbing lotion on himself on a regular basis. This quirk is not completely novel (read: Silence of the Lambs), and I don't like it as much as some of his other characters, like the man obsessed with mustard in Dekker's book, Skin, but I still enjoyed it. I get the sense that to the eye of a Christian, a man like this would truly get under the skin.

One of the things that I appreciated the most was the horror/disturbing element to it. Dekker was not afraid to push things to an uncomfortable level, including describing instances of bones being broken. I especially enjoyed the scene where Bethany was forced to break her father's foot. Too often, books brush over, or nonsensically omit, nastiness like this from the story, which is no fun. The violence also ties into the story, as Ryan still goes back for his daughter even after this, which convinces Bethany to give him another chance.

Missteps (Spoilers)

I mentioned before that this book has a variety of technical failures. I mostly mean a failure of execution.

One thing I did not particularly like was the prose. It wasn't terrible—it wasn't nearly as bad as The Reversal—yet I did not think the book was nearly as descriptive as it could have been, and I didn't think the descriptions were very inspired. Often, I felt like some of the drama was melodramatic, like Dekker didn't really have a good handle on communicating emotions naturally.

I also thought some of the characterization was weird and inconsistent. The main character, Ryan, is shown to have a powerful ability to suppress his emotions and control how he thinks in tense situations. This is shown at the very beginning. He understandably hits a breaking point in the beginning of the novel, but Dekker extends this break throughout the whole story and it felt like he had lost sight of who Ryan was supposed to be. Ryan emotionally breaks multiple times throughout the book and comes across as weepy. Generally, I was just disappointed that we weren't given a more controlled person to follow, someone who struggled to express emotions, so tension could be built off of that. If Ryan had been controlled throughout that book, even as his daughter is taken, only to break down at the very end, during their reunion, I would have appreciated the character more.

Another point that I want to bring up about Ryan is that I kept getting the feeling that Ryan ought to be learning something about fatherhood over the course of the story. And I mean this in addition to his realization that he has failed in the past. Throughout the story, he never has a doubt in his mind that he is the right man for the job; even as his daughter rejects him, I kept getting the impression that he would need to learn to let her go, or, more specifically, stop being so pushy. But this never happened. The implication of the story is that he was the right man for the job all along (not something that he needed to learn), and Bethany is the one that comes around to him. I think the story would have felt more natural and human if there was a little bit of both involved here.

There is also the message of the story. I'm no longer religious, but, overall, I don't mind stories that have religious messages. Neither am I offended by overly preachy books; they might be ham-fisted and unlikeable as art, but I like to get inside the minds of other people, so the stories are always interesting on a more abstract level. So, that applies to this book. I thought the book was a bit ham-fisted with its religious messaging. Every time they talked about god or something related, it felt inserted and unnatural. Part of this had to with the fact that the characters were not obviously Christian in character, even as they made religious commentary. This shows that the author is getting carried away with his message and failing to incorporate it into the story so that the messaging feels to be a part of the story.

And then there was one plot point that I thought was confusing and stupid: Bethany was BoneMan's natural daughter. This was exceedingly convenient, devoid of foreshadowing or any such set up, didn't have follow up, and didn't even matter in the grand scheme of things. I just don't know why this was thrown in at all.

Finally, I thought the ending of the book was a bit too sudden. If there had been an epilogue, which followed up on all of the characters involved, then I think the story would have ended more naturally.

A nitpick of this book is something that also plagues John Grisham novels, so if you have ever read one of those, you know what I am talking about. This may or may not have to do with the writing, but the back of the cover (inside of the cover) description of the story covers the first 200 pages of a 400-hundred-page novel. I honestly will never understand why books are advertised like this, but it’s really fucking annoying. The first half feels twice as long as the second half because I'm just waiting for the key plot points to set the story in motion. Either Dekker needs to get these moments covered earlier in the book, or he needs to change the advertisement.

Conclusion

I enjoyed the book, overall, even in spite of some obvious flaws. I think I'll give the book a 6/10.