Dekker does it again with this amazing new thriller that challenges the reader to reject what the world deems to be “normal” and “beautiful.”

Brad Raines is an FBI Agent tracking down a serial killer who kidnaps beautiful-seemingly innocent-women, and drains the blood from their body and leaves them hanging up to be found as perfect and blemish-free brides, hence the name The Bride Collector. Nikki, a psychologist working with Brad on the case, helps Brad for the sake of the case, but it is clear she has romantic interests in Brad. Quinton Gauld is the killer Brad is tracking: he leaves no evidence behind except a note revealing his intentions-to make things personal. Brad, with no other clues in the note than an implied reference of the mentally instability of the killer, stumbles upon The Center for Wellness and Intelligence, a secluded home for the mentally and emotionally challenged, yet extremely smart people. Here he meets Roudy, a self-proclaimed modern day Sherlock Holmes, Andrea, a stunningly beautiful schizophrenic who is great with numbers and patterns, Cassanova, the ladies’ man, and Paradise, a broken and unkempt young woman who may have the ability to see the last few minutes of a person’s life before their death. Hoping to use Paradise’s gift, Brad brings the rag-tag group in on the case, but not before the killer strikes again.

The Bride Collector is an intense ride, with naturally gruesome scenes, quirky characters, and a message that applies not just to the characters, but to the reader themselves.

Interestingly, I was really impressed with the literary depth of characterization Dekker implemented into this story. Unlike most murder-mysteries, the reader is almost immediately introduced to the killer himself, revealing his name, his methods, his insight on the world and why he is killing these women. Dekker compares and contrasts the hero, Brad, and his antithesis, Quinton: their personalities, their purposeful actions, their motivations, the environments in which they surround themselves and the traumatic events in their past that they are still coping with. He asks the symbolic question, “Are these two men the same?” and then lets the story play out.

Dekker also introduces us to two women which are compared and contrasted. Nikki is Brad’s partner on the case, a psychologist whose interest for Brad is to the world, natural. Paradise is a young woman haunted by psychological disorders, a past that scars her, and the possible gift that she can see ghosts and possibly experience the last few minutes of a person’s life before their death. Dekker compares the two women, focusing on Nikki in the first half of the book, and then on Paradise in the last half, allowing the reader to experience how both women are valued, cherished, favored, and beautiful.

Dekker’s characterization is spot on, with rich background history of the main four characters, along with a cast of mentally and emotionally challenged-yet extremely intelligent-characters who attempt to help Brad and their friend Paradise crack the case of the Bride Collector. Their quirkiness provides humor that lightens the weight of intensity of the situation for a brief moment.

The story and plot is a fast ride, taking twists and turns and unexpected results that refuse to let the reader put the book down for a second.

Dekker also explores such themes as “normalcy”, motivations and desires, and “who is God’s favorite?”. All in all, Dekker has a well-written, purposeful story that is sure to shape the hearts of those who read it.

LOTR Frodo Goblet

I just made one of my famous fruit smoothies this evening, and am enjoying it from my LOTR Frodo Goblet (circa 2001). And then had a thought that I would post it as my Facebook status, along with the recipe.

And then I had another thought: Go ahead and post it on your blog that no one reads so you can keep it handy for archival purposes and later reference when you have forgotten how to make it again at the beginning of next summer.

Thus, the topic of this blog post. Here we go.

First off, get your blender ready. Make sure its clean from all the pancake gook that was sitting in it three days ago from your roommate’s experiments in the kitchen.

Next, fill the blender with precisely six (6) ice cubes of medium density. It must not be four(4)  or five (5), but six (6) shall be the number of ice cubes you fill the blender. Seven (7) is one (1) ice cube too many, thus the number shall be six (6), and six (6) alone.

Now you must get a banana. Be sure to peel the banana the right way, from the bottom up. I would not recommend making the smoothie without following this crucial step. Put the innards of the banana in the blender with the six (6) ice cubes.

Grab an apple. Doesn’t matter if its red or green, or yellow or a mixture of both. Just as long as its not brown. Or wormy. No one likes worms in their famous fruit smoothies. Here, you have a choice on how you do this, but I would recommend putting the apple in the blender in pieces as opposed to just throwing the whole thing in there. I prefer to use my handy dandy knock off apple wedger (here’s the real original product from years ago) to cut the apple into eight (8) nifty wedges without the core. Or you can just use a regular knife and cut the apple up by hand. Put the pieces in the blender with the banana innards and six (6) ice cubes.

Look in your freezer for your bag of frozen strawberries. Or if its the season, try looking in your fridge for your fresh hand-picked strawberries. Place five (5) (not six (6)!) strawberries in the blender with the six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, and eight (8) apple wedges.

Now open your refrigerator and take out your orange juice. At least that is where I hope you store your orange juice. That is where I store mine. I would imagine if might taste pretty nasty if you kept it anywhere else for any length of time. Pour the orange juice into the blender with the six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, and five (5) strawberries until it fills about three-fourths (3/4) the amount of blender already filled. Note: this is not three-fourths (3/4) of the entire blender, but instead three-fourths (3/4) the amount of space already taken up in the blender by the six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, and five (5) strawberries.

Put the blender on its stand, ensuring that it is fully situated in its base and ready for operation.

Lastly, turn on the blender. If your blender has an Ice Crush feature, I would recommend using it at this point to crush up the six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, five (5) strawberries and orange juice. At some point when you feel that the blender is ready, you can try putting it on Smoothie mode, and let it run.

If the blender freezes up and does not spin the crushed six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, five (5) strawberries and orange juice, turn the blender off. Try shaking the blender and put it back on its stand. Turn the blender back on again. If this continues to happen repeatedly, try adding more orange juice in the blender along with the six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, and five (5) strawberries.

Let the blender run for a couple minutes on the Smoothie setting. Once the six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, five (5) strawberries and orange juice seem like they are sufficiently smoothieized, get out your favorite LOTR goblet and pour the smoothie made up of six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, five (5) strawberries and orange juice into the awesome collectable.

Finally, sit back, kick up your feet and enjoy this awesome and famous fruit smoothie made up of six (6) ice cubes, banana innards, eight (8) apple wedges, five (5) strawberries, and orange juice in a LOTR goblet. You’ll be thanking me all summer long.

P.S. A LOTR goblet is purely optional, if you have another drinking recepticle you would prefer to use, you have my permission to utilize such a lower form of recipticles if you so choose.

By popular request via comments and emails, I have created a page with a detailed tutorial on how to effectively use the Stylizing Modifications textboxes in my widgets. Go ahead and take a read, you might find something that interests you!

The Classic Crime presents their fans with their full length sophomore effort The Silver Chord on Tuesday, July 22^nd. Four days before the release, the band made public the full album in conjunction with Myspace Music. On the heels of their Seattle EP released last fall, The Silver Chord offers fans a harder and darker work, slightly tainted by repeating lyrics.

The silver chord is a term directly taken from the Bible. Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 says just before the well known Meaningless passage,

“Remember [your Creator]-before the silver chord is severed…and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

The silver chord is a representation of life, a life given by the Creator just once to every man. And likewise, The Silver Cord album is a representation of the ups and downs of life, a searching for that one thing, that longing.

Before I talk more in depth about the songs themselves, there is one thing that brings the album as a whole down. This is the fact that certain terms and phrases are repeated over and over and over again in most songs. However, the vocalist does use different pitches and volumes and melodies during the ad naseum that follows the changing of the beat, melody and tempo of the song.

The CD begins with a track called “The End,” and ends with a track called “The Beginning.” “The End” is a sorrowful song about a hard fought battle and leading followers into an ambush. Shame is present, and leads into the next song, “Just A Man”, which deals with regrets. Choices were made because they were the easy thing to do instead of the right thing to do (especially as a leader). (”I’m just a man” ad naseum.)

One of the first singles from this CD, “Gravedigging” is about a man’s struggle with suicide…resorting to digging his own grave because things in life are useless…leading others to follow (the last line exclaims, “We’re digging our own grave!”).

“The Way That You Are” is a song directed towards a guy and a girl in separate verses (makes me think of TFK’s “This Is A Call”). Ultimately they are both discouraged by their life, and the song encourages them not to let what others think become what they really are or could be. (”This is the way that you are” ad naseum.)

The next song, “5805″ begins by reminding me of the music of a modern waltz with vocals. The lyrics are a reminiscence and longing for the good times gone by growing up, spending time with our friends and listening to concerts shouting at the top of our lungs. (”Like that” ad naseum.)

“Salt in the Snow” is a look at where the singer is right now in life, how “like salt in the snow / I’m melted and left on the side of the road.” He is not pleased or happy with where he is, and so he is looking to the hope that “winter’s cold will give way to summer’s warmth.” Powerfully, he cries out to someone bigger than himself (God?), “I took you for granted again….I was wrong again / are you listening?” (”Woah…” ad nauseum.)

The first single released last month, “Abracadavers”, is a rant against vanity and selfishness. “We’re all the same, made of hair and bones and water and blood cells / We’re all to blame for spending way too much time on ourselves.” We’re all human but we think we can make ourselves look better than any other human, but in reality the way we really grow and become a true hero is through suffering.

“R and R” is a regret of choosing to run away and a longing for home. Like the title implies, the seeker is looking for true Rest and Relaxation where he belongs. (”How long, how long?” and “Woah” ad naseum.)

“God and Drugs” acknowledges that God won’t go away, even while we look elsewhere for Him through our own efforts. (”Oh oh oh oh” ad naseum.) Similar to it, “Medisin” is an interesting twist on a common concept. Usually, we take medicine to help our bodies stay alive. But this song acknowledges that we also indulge in sin in the same way, to try and stay alive. However, the singer knows that “there is more to life” than taking the tranquilizing medicine of sin to keep him asleep and in oblivious slavery.

“The Ascent” is a voiceless track 1:54 long, with an upbeat and hopeful feel. This is immediately followed by “Sing,” which is a synthetically accented song calling for the singer himself to sing, to lift spirits, and change things for the better

The next track, “Everything” is a song about the pleasures of intimacy of the singer with his girl, and his love and longing for her.

“Closer Than We Think” reveals that in spite of the downs in life, “I am true and I am living” An attention-grabbing play on a line in the well known 23^rd Psalm says that “We will walk through the valley of the shadow of the boring and we will burn it all. We will not go quietly” But this is all because of the hope that “that despite what we’ve done, we’re closer than we think to home.” (”To home…” ad naseum.)

The last song, called “The Beginning” feels hopeful, as the singer is finally coming home (which could be symbolized as his homeland, his girl, and/or his God, maybe all three) and the revelation hits him that God has taken his life, through the ups and downs, and continues to make him a beautiful thing. (”The sea…” and “I’d let her go” ad naseum.)

Ultimately, The Silver Chord is a stirring account of life’s experiences. The Classic Crime was not afraid to be truthful and honest about these experiences and feelings, which is evident in the various struggles each song exemplifies. Life is a journey, and the only thing you can do is press on through the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, searching and longing for something else. That something else is home. That is The Silver Chord.

My Rating:

Germ, by Robert Liparulo, is a thrilling read from start to finish. The back of the book does not really give away what the true story is about, it just uses a generalized summary of an overarching plot point: a new form of the Ebola virus exists that is transmitted airborne, and it will only target certain people. Only the last sentence of the back cover hint at what the majority of the book is about: “Pray the assassins get you first.”

The book consists of ninety-nine relatively short chapters, as well as a prologue and an epilogue. The POV is always third person, with most chapters devoted to one character’s limited viewpoint. However, the novel does primarily revolve around the central character, Julia Mattheson and the supporting characters of Steven and Allen Parker.

The entire journey of reading this book is a thrill ride in itself. There is hardly a dull moment, and when the characters are given a short reprieve from being on the run, their thoughts revealed to the reader are never close to having a chance to rest. Frequently, a chapter will end on a cliffhanger and switch to a different POV in the next, leaving you to wonder and forcing you to continue to read.

The plot of this thriller is plausible, but luckily not quite reality (as far as we know). The main protagonists are trying to prevent the unleashing of a:

…strain of the Ebola virus that seeks out specific individuals through their DNA. Once released into the atmosphere, the virus probably travels from host to host like a flu bug, but harmless. It checks the DNA of each host, comparing it to some set of instructions he has encoded within the virus. If it matches, it turns into full-blown Ebola; if it doesn’t, it moves on to another host … until it finds a match. (Germ, p. 372)

As far as I know, a virus that can target individuals based on DNA has not been developed (yet!), but how scary would that be. So good work on coming up with a realistic and thrilling plot.

The main chunk of the thriller however, revolves around Julia, Allen, and Stephen running from an assassin named Atropos whose primary weapons of choice are a spiked gauntlet and laser sighted pistol. These scenes are priceless, and yet, it begs the question, “How lucky can you get to keep escaping all these times?”

I did like the backstory mythos behind Atropos and the power players behind the creation of the virus. It certainly added dimension to the story and the development of the characters.

One slight issue I had was in the first part of the story, a Wall Street journalist was introduced who was sent a list of the people the virus targeted (he was not informed about the significance of this list). He began some research on what the list could mean and then all of the sudden just dropped it and dropped out of the story line. Now I realize that the main reason he was there was to reveal to the reader that ten thousand individuals–high, middle and low class–were infected around the country. I just wish that this would have tied in better with the rest of the plot and story line.

Characterization was on par with what I would expect a quality thriller to achieve. The main characters had depth and feeling to them, yet it was not overly dramatized. Dialogue was natural sounding and easy to read.

The settings seemed real enough, ranging from Atlanta to Chattanooga to Paraguay. Descriptions were quite vivid and very easy to picture.

I was impressed with the author’s ability to pay close attention to details, and acknowledge them by following what the reader would be thinking. At one point in the book, I tried counting the number of bullets Julia had left, and two sentences later she is doing that exact thing.

The story has the classic good guys win ending, but not without some hurt. I was thankful that it did have a Christian character in it, but did not try to be preachy about it or make the whole point of the story or the denouement about someone becoming saved. The example was there, but things were left open like they should be. The characters should have free will, just like we do in real life.

All in all, this was novel that lives up to its subheading: A Thriller. Great job Mr. Liparulo!