THREE by TED DEKKER PODCAST
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Okay, I’ll admit it. I finished this story the day before yesterday, and I
can’t get it off of my mind. If anybody has read this book, will they
please post comments to this blog? I want to discuss this book with
somebody so bad that it aches. You know what I mean? I wish I was still
in a book club and this was the pick of the month!
MAJOR SPOILER! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
This book had a surprise ending, an ending that I’m still trying to
grasp and make sense of. Kevin, a divinity school student has suddenly
been plagued by disturbing phone calls by a man named Slater. Slater
asks a riddle, giving Kevin an amount of time to respond. If he doesn’t
respond, Slater retaliates by setting off a bomb. Slater accomplishes
his bomb threats in the book, and when the FBI gets involved, things get
pretty heated since Slater does not want cops involved with his “game”
with Kevin.
Jennifer, an FBI agent, is attracted to Kevin. She finds his childlike
curiosity, and his quiet nature to be appealing.
As Jennifer works on the case, she encourages Kevin to try and uncover the
real identity of Slater. Slater says he’ll stop his threats if Kevin
will confess his sin. Kevin assumes Slater is a boy he knew many years
ago, whom he’d left in an abandoned building to die. Kevin assumes
Slater is back to get revenge on him since he tried to “kill” him by
leaving him in the building with no means of escape. Kevin did this act
only to save his best and only friend Samantha(Sam). Sam also comes to
Kevin’s rescue when he contacts her, telling of how his car exploded.
Sam and Kevin have deep feelings for one another, but they never
pursued a relationship because they don’t want to mess up their
friendship by having a romance.
After many twists and turns, threats by Slater, and probing by Jennifer
and Samantha, it’s discovered, over a four-day period of time(and a
little over four hundred pages) that Kevin, Slater, and Samantha are all
one person! Kevin has multiple personalities and he assumes that Slater
and Samantha are people he’s known from his past, but they actually
don’t exist.
I keep thinking about this book because I’m trying to piece together
how plausible it was to have such extended scenes and conversations
between Sam and Kevin and Kevin and Slater. It’s hard for me to picture
this, however, I guess, once the truth has been revealed, the reader
would just need to assume that all of the details of the events happened in
Kevin’s head. I know this type of mental disorder does indeed exist, and it’s hard for me to imagine seeing people, having conversations with them for extended periods of time, and they’re really not there. I guess it’s kind of like when you are dreaming, it seems real, but you wake up and know it’s a dream. With this type of mental disorder, I’d think it would be like you were dreaming, except it happens when you are awake, and you are not aware that the people you are talking to are not real?
This story reminded me of a Sidney Sheldon title I read years ago
called Tell Me Your Dreams. In Sheldon’s book it was a woman who was the main character, and she had two other personalities. There is a string of murders involved in this book. It’s hard for me to remember all of the details of this book clearly since I read it several years ago.
If anybody reading this has read Thr3e, feel free to post your comments.