The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker

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 Wellness and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill individuals whose 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 picks up 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? [via GoodReads]

This is my first Dekker novel - don’t really know why I haven’t read anything by him before - but that is definitely soon to change. The Bride Collector was an edge of your seat suspenseful thriller that I really enjoyed. It started off a bit slow for me, but midway through the book I was completely hooked. I just had to know what would happen next. Raines and Paradise were both great. I enjoyed their interactions with one another. But I have to say that I was really taken by some of the residents of The Center for Wellness and Development. I loved the lightness they brought to the novel and I found them quite interesting in their own right.

There were many spiritual questions evident throughout the novel but the religion aspect is not so over powering as to take away from a readers enjoyment. It is not preachy or pretentious in any way, instead I found it to be thought provoking. Mr. Dekker's writing is fluid and I thought he did a fantastic job of blending a really freaky thriller (gruesome at times, but never gory), with Christianity.

All in all, this was a fabulous book that thriller fans should not miss out on.

This book was provided for review by Hachette Book Group.