Thr3e by Ted Dekker

Thr3e by Ted Dekker

Enter a world where nothing is what it seems. Where your closest friend could be your greatest enemy.

Kevin Parson is driving his car late one summer day when, suddenly, his cell phone rings. A man who identifies himself as Slater speaks in a breathy voice: You have exactly three minutes to confess your sin to the world. Refuse, and the car you're driving will blow sky high.

Kevin panics. Who would make such a call? What sin? Kevin ditches the car. Precisely three minutes later, a massive explosion sets his world on a collision course with madness.

From the #1 best-selling fiction author comes a powerful story of good, evil, and all that lies between.

This is my first Ted Dekker book. Shocking, I know. He's been around and I've been around and we've never crossed paths. The interesting part about this book is that it's a psychological thriller. I'm usually pretty picky about my psycho thrillers because it irks me when the characters assigned to be "experts" in the field don't have a clue about what they're talking about.

For instance, "Sybil" is diagnosed with a horrific case of Multiple Personality Disorder which was appropriate because of the time. Today, a character diagnosed with said disorder would not be considered an expert since it has been removed from the diagnostic bible therapists use to categorize mental illness. And bill insurance companies.

So do I ruin the crux of this book? Maybe a little.

But first, a positive angle on a human psyche. When we experience trauma, we must move on. In order to move on, we choose to park that experience in a box and push it into the closet. Unhealthy people dissociate. Healthy people compartmentalize. Is it semantics? Or is it a fracture in our new reality?

Freud: Super - Ego, Ego, Id.

Transactional Analysis: Parent, Adult, Child.

Good/Evil: Man, angel on one shoulder, devil on another.

One of the characters in this book might or might not be having a nervous breakdown (not in the DSM-IV) and might be experiences DID (in the DSM-IV) as opposed to MPD (in the DSM-III). And the experts in the book are actually experts. Dekker has done his homework and creates either a true case of DID or casts enough doubt on the lucidity of the accused.

Me? I compartmentalize. What voices in my head?