The Priest's Graveyard

Title: The Priest's Graveyard
Author: Ted Dekker
Publisher: Center Street
Date Published: April 19 2011
Pages: 360

Two abandoned souls are on the hunt for one powerful man. Soon, their paths will cross and lead to one twisted fate. Danny Hansen is a Bosnian immigrant who came to America with hopes of escaping haunted memories of a tragic war that took his mother's life. Now he's a priest incensed by the powerful among us who manipulate the law for their own gain, uncaring of the shattered lives they leave behind. It is his duty to show them the error of their ways, even if he must put them in the grave. Renee Gilmore is the frail and helpless victim of one such powerful man. Having escaped his clutches, she now lives only to satisfy justice by destroying him, regardless of whom she must become in that pursuit.But when Danny and Renee's paths become inexorably entangled things go very, very badly and neither of them may make it out of this hunt alive.--Summery from Goodreads

I picked this book up at Barnes and Noble a month ago. I've heard of the author before and the storyline sounded interesting enough, if not a little disturbing, so I decided to read it. The strange thing about it was that it is written in both first and third person. I liked Dekker's writing style well enough but his characters seemed a little stiff. After a while I came to like Danny, but I despised Renee. Have you ever seen a movie called Boondock Saints? In my mind Danny was cast as one of the Saints and Renee was cast as Rocco, the idiot who says, "we could kill everyone." Nevertheless, Rocco was a likeable character. The same really couldn't be said about Renee. Okay, maybe I'm being a little too harsh, she wasn't TOO bad, but she just really got on my nerves.
I confess, I almost put this book down after the scene where they cut up the body into pieces, but I was too far into the book. So, despite all things previously mentioned I decided I was going to finish it, and I am mostly glad I did. The last 100 pages or so were amazing! It raised the book from a 2 star rating to a 3 star rating. I was sitting on the edge of my seat wondering what terrible thing was going to happen next. One thing can be said about Ted Dekker he can write the twisted stuff. That is a complement by the way.

I have one last note to make. If you have a weak stomach don't read this book. It's not pretty.