The Priest's Graveyard

By: Ted Dekker

Narrated by: Rebecca Soler, Henry Leyva

Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

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 who lives by a law of love and compassion. It is powerful men and hypocrites who abide by legal law but eschew the law of love that most incense Danny. As an avenging angel, he believes it is his duty to show them the error of their ways, at any cost.

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.

Judge not, or you too will be judged.

©2011 Ted Dekker (P)2011 Hachette Audio

Seriously Let Down!!!

I attempted repeatedly to want this story to make sense, to reach even a modicum of credibility. But it is just not there, The marketing hype would have you believe this story is a gut wrenching tale of two widely different, driven individuals uniting in a glorious crusade to rid the world of evil.
What it actually is is a factious, implausible tale about two mentally ill mercenaries that take the law into their own hands and murder people that it is not entirely clear ever did anything to deserve it. A mishmash of nonsensical characters afflicted with popular personality disorders, behaving, not mysteriously, but badly. Weak rationalizations are passed off as coarse, incredulous dialogue throughout. This is a poorly conceived and written psycho-soap opera.

Excellent idea. Poor execution.

In an attempt to explore some wonderful themes (justice, vengeance, love and grace in regard to religious belief and societal laws), the Priest's Graveyard started off wonderfully, but went south pretty fast. Unique characters quickly morph into the cardboard cutout variety when their actions start to bend to the ridiculous plot.

A vigilante priest who takes justice into his own hands is terribly intriguing. Then, as we watch him interrogate his first offender and are made privy to his inner turmoil via a painfully indecisive interior monologue, we see that it???s not really a moral struggle, but more the fact that this character doesn???t know what he???s doing or what he???s really about, even though he thinks he does.

The same can be said of the recovering heroin addict and the ridiculous sequence of events that bring her to where she is. She???s another ditsy character that is at one moment full of conviction and self righteousness, and then the next second she's second guessing herself, and then she's full of conviction, and then second guessing herself, and then??? It???s tiring. We???re treated to monologue after monologue of the same thing from both main characters, especially in the last third of the book.

Cardboard characters and ridiculous plot aside, the theme at the core of the book is one worth exploring. It???s just a shame that by the time the main characters begin to really reflect on it, I no longer cared about them, not even a little bit.