Obsessed

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Overview

Stephen Friedman is making a good living in good times. He's just an ordinary guy. Or so he thinks.

But one day an extraordinary piece of information tells him differently. It's a clue from the grave of a Holocaust survivor. A clue that makes him heir to an incredible fortune . . . a clue that only he and one other man can possibly understand.

That man is Roth Braun, a serial killer who has been waiting for Stephen for thirty years. Roth was stopped once before. This time nothing will get in his way.

Known worldwide for page-turning, adrenaline-laced thrillers, Dekker raises the stakes in this story of passion, revenge, and an all-consuming obsession for the ultimate treasure.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Dekker's (Red, etc.) novel begins intriguingly, flashing back and forth between the 1940s story of two pregnant concentration camp inmates tormented by an evil commandant and the 1970s story of the unfinished business their children resolve. While the characters, especially the group of women in the concentration camp, are initially compelling, their development is subsumed by a tedious plot. Only one scene offers real suspense and horror. Surrounding that compelling moment-when the two young inmates make a desperate choice under appalling circumstances-is an uneven novel with an excessive fascination with its villains' sadism and several abrupt and unseemly changes in tone. The most enduring and wearying contrivance is the extended treatment of Nazism as a quasi-religion, elevated to a homespun form of Satanism by the commandant, Gerhard Braun, and his equally evil son, Roth. The ever-changing rules of this religion are used as a poor and convoluted rationale to explain why Gerhard and Roth let the women and their children live for 30 years, despite countless opportunities to kill them. Dekker adds a treasure hunt element to the plot and a certain amount of slapstick, which feels inappropriate in conjunction with nightmarish scenes from the Holocaust. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781595543110
Publisher: Nelson, Thomas, Inc.
Publication date: 10/31/2006
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 512
Sales rank: 140,468
Product dimensions: 6.86 (w) x 10.88 (h) x 1.21 (d)

Meet the Author

Ted Dekker

Ted Dekker is known for novels that combine adrenaline-laced stories packed with unexpected plot twists, unforgettable characters, and incredible confrontations between good and evil. He is the best-selling author of The Circle Trilogy (Black, Red, and White), Blink of An Eye, Heaven’s Wager, When Heaven Weeps, and Thunder of Heaven and the co-author of Blessed Child and A Man Called Blessed. Raised in the jungles of Indonesia, Ted now lives in Texas with his wife and children.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Hamburg, Germany

July 17, 1973

Tuesday Morning

ROTH BRAUN SLOWLY TWISTED THE DOORKNOB AND GAVE THE door a slight shove. A familiar medicinal odor stung his nostrils. Outside,
the sun warmed a midsummer day, but here in the dungeon below the house, the old man lived in perpetual twilight.

Roth imagined a Jew stepping into a delicing shower and let himself relish the horror he might feel in that moment of realizing that more than lice were meant to die in this chamber.

Roth was in a very good mood.

The smothering quiet was broken by the sound of the old prune's tarred, seventy-eight-year-old lungs rasping for relief. Gerhard's wheezing annoyed Roth, ruining his otherwise perfect mood.

The only living soul he despised more than the Jew who'd stolen his power was Gerhard, who had allowed the Jew to steal his power.

He glanced at Klaus, the gangly male nurse who had tended his father for three years. The white-smocked man hovered over Gerhard in the corner of the room, refusing to meet Roth's eyes. Gerhard Braun sat in a dark-red leather recliner, blue eyes glaring over the nasal cannula protruding from each nostril.

"Good morning, Father," Roth said. He closed the door quietly and stepped into the room, pushing aside a curtain of tinkling glass beads that separated it from the entryway. "You wanted to see me?"

His father looked at a servant, who busied himself over the table in the adjacent dining room.

"Leave us."

By the trembling in his voice, either Gerhard really was dying, or something was upsetting him, which invariably sowed its own sort of death. How many men alive today had been responsible for as many deaths as his father? They could be counted on two hands.

Even so, Roth hated him.

The servant dipped his head and exited through a side door. The steel door closed and the nurse flinched. Glass in a cabinet behind the table rattled despite the room's solid-concrete walls. The nineteenth-century Russian crystal--one of dozens of similar collections pilfered during the war--had once belonged to the czar. The Nazis' defeat should have sent Gerhard to the gallows; instead, the war had left his father with obscene wealth. The paintings alone had netted him a significant fortune, and these he owned legally. He'd shipped them to Zurich, where a hotly contested law made them his after remaining unclaimed for five years.
Compliments of the Swiss Federation of Art Dealers.

Until the day I suck the energy from your bones, I will love you for showing me the way.

Until the day I suck the energy from your bones, I will despise you for what you did.

Gerhard held up a newspaper. "Have you read this?"

Roth walked across the circular rope rug that covered the black cement slab and stopped five feet from Gerhard. A hawk nose curved over his father's thin, trembling lips. Wispy strands of gray hair backlit by a yellow lamp hovered over his scalp. Skeletal, blue-veined fingers clutched what appeared to be a Los Angeles Times. A stack of newspapers--the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, London's Daily Telegraph, and a dozen others--
sat a half-meter thick on the small end table to his left. Gerhard routinely

spent six hours each day reading.

Gerhard flung the paper with a flick of his wrist, never removing his eyes from Roth. It landed on the floor with a smack.

"Read it."

The male nurse pretended to fiddle with the oxygen tank. Roth stood still. This attitude of Gerhard's was no longer simply ruining his mood,
but destroying it altogether.

"I said, 'Read it'!"

Roth calmly bent and picked up the paper. The Los Angeles Times was folded around an article in the Life section, "Fortune Goes to Museum."
Roth scanned the text. A wealthy woman, a Jew named Rachel Spritzer,
sixty-two years of age, had died three days ago in Los Angeles. She'd been survived by no one and had donated her entire estate to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

"So another Jew's dead." Roth lowered the paper. "Your legacy lives on."

His father clutched the arms of his chair. "Read the rest."

His chest sounded like a whistle.
If Roth wasn't a master of his own impulses, he might have done something stupid, such as kill the man. Instead, he set the paper on the windowsill and turned away. "You've read it, Father. Tell me what it says.
I have a ten o'clock engagement."

"Cancel it."

Roth walked to the bar. Control. "Just tell me what has you so concerned."

"The Stones of David have me concerned."

Roth blinked. He poured a splash of cognac into a snifter.

"I'm finished chasing your ghosts." He swirled the brandy slowly before sipping it. "If the Stones still exist, we would have found them long ago."

Gerhard managed to stand, trembling from head to foot, red as a rooster around the neck.

"They have been found. And you know what that means."

He launched into a coughing fit.
Roth's pulse quickened a hair and then eased. If the man wasn't dying, he was losing his mind. Surely the Stones hadn't been found after all this time.

Gerhard staggered three steps to the windowsill, pushing his startled nurse out of the way, and grabbed the newspaper. He leaned on the wall with one hand and held the paper up in the other. He threw the paper toward Roth. It fluttered noisily and landed on the black slab.

"Read it!" Gerhard's eyes drilled him. So then maybe there was something to this.

Roth picked up the paper, found the article, and slowly read down the column. What if Gerhard was right? What if the relics did exist after all? They would be priceless. But the Stones' monetary value didn't interest Gerhard--he already had enough wealth to waste in his final years.

Gerhard's obsession was for the journal that had gone missing with the Stones.

And Roth's obsession was for the power that had gone missing with the Jew who'd taken the journal.

He had spent nearly thirty years tracking down innumerable leads,
searching in vain. There was no telling how much wealth had been stripped from the Jews when Hitler had gathered them up and sent them to the camps. Much of the fortune had been confiscated by the gestapo and recovered after the war, but a number of particularly valuable items--
priceless relics that belonged in museums or in vaults--had disappeared.
Some of those treasures could be found in this very house. But any wellheeled collector knew that the most valuable collection had vanished for good in 1945.

The Stones of David.

One stunning item in Spritzer's collection is an extremely old golden medallion,
better known as one of the five Stones of David. According to legend,
the medallions are the actual stones selected by David to kill the giant Goliath. The smooth stones were subsequently gilded and stamped with the Star of David. The collection was last verified in 1307, when they were held by the Knights Templars. The collection was rumored to be held by a wealthy Jewish collector before World War II but went missing before the claim could be verified.

Alone, each medallion may be worth over $10,000,000. But the collection in its entirety is valued at roughly $100,000,000. The relic will be displayed in a museum yet to be disclosed with the following cryptic caption at Rachel Spritzer's request: "The Stones are like the lost orphans. They will eventually find each other."

Sweat cooled Roth's palms. He set the paper on the bar, set an unsteady finger in its margin, and scanned to the end.

Rachel Spritzer lived alone in an apartment complex she owned on La Brea Avenue and died a widow. The complex will be sold by the estate, along with much of Spritzer's noncollectible property.

Rudy and Rachel Spritzer immigrated to the United States sixteen years ago, five years before Rudy was killed in an automobile accident.
(See B4.)

For a moment Roth's vision clouded. His mouth went dry

."Now I have your attention?" Gerhard demanded.

Roth read the article again, searching for any phrase that might undermine the possibility that this Jew could be anyone other than whom Gerhard was suggesting.

"She was sixty-two," Gerhard said. "The right age."

Roth's mind flashed back to those war years when he was only twelve.
Even if the connections were only circumstantial, he could hardly ignore them.

"I knew the Jew survived," Gerhard said.

"She donated only one Stone. There were five."

"If one Stone exists, then the journal exists. Someone has that journal!"

"She's dead."

"You will make her speak from the grave." Gerhard swayed on his feet, right fist trembling. His eyes looked black in the basement's shadows."She knew. She knew about the journal."

"She's dead!" Roth snapped. He took a deep breath, irritated with himself for losing control. The fact was, Gerhard's history with the Stones gave him knowledge that no one else could possibly have.

"You know well enough that the journal implicates the entire line of elders. It lists each of our names and the names of the women we killed.
It must be found!"

Mention of the women triggered a coppery taste in the back of Roth's mouth. The last time he'd seen the journal, it contained 243 names. Roth would one day surpass that number, he had vowed it.

But even a thousand or ten thousand would not compensate for the one that had escaped Gerhard

."That woman would toy with me even in her death," the old man said. "In her house, in her belongings--somewhere, the old bat left a trail.
You will go to Los Angeles." The nurse, Klaus, moved to assist Gerhard back to his seat, but the old man shook him off. Klaus retreated.

Gerhard was right. The Stones could lead to the journal. The journal could lead to the Jew. The Jew would lead to power, a supernatural power that his father had never attained. But Roth would.

The prospect of finding the Jew after so many years felt delightfully obscene.

Roth realized that his fingers were trembling.

"The United States," Roth said absently. "We don't have the same liberties there."

"That's never stopped you before."

The notion swarmed Roth like bees from a disturbed hive. Hope.
More than hope--a desperate urgency to possess. Pounding heart, dry mouth. He was no fool. He would neither fight the emotion nor show it.
After lingering so long on the edges of his mind, the desire to possess this one lost hope swallowed him. This is what Roth lived for, the purest form of power found in the very emotion that at this very moment raged through his body.

In his mind's eye he was already flying to America. He would have to move quickly, set the trap immediately. There was no telling how long they would keep the old Jew's collectibles in Los Angeles.

Roth stared into his father's blue eyes for a few long seconds, torn between the man's mad obsession with the past and his own with the future. What Roth did for tomorrow, Gerhard did because of yesterday.
Who was the better man?

breakfast he'd ever tasted. Perhaps leaving his mother in Germany to spend the summer with his father up in Poland would be a good thing after all. He was twelve at the time.

"Papa?"

"What?" his father asked, walking toward the window overlooking the concentration camp.

"Why do Polish eggs taste better than German eggs?

"
His father pulled back the curtain, and Roth saw a woman hanging from the main gate. Gerhard answered him, but Roth didn't hear the response. The year was 1942, and hers was the first of many dead bodies Roth would see in Poland. But there was something about the first.

Roth let the memory linger, then returned his mind to the Stones.His father's eyes glistened with tears; his face wrinkled.

"The Jew took my soul. She took my soul! I beg you, my son." Roth felt a terrible pity for him. A single tear broke free and ran down Gerhard's right cheek.

"If the Jew is alive, she will be drawn by the Stone," Roth said.

"Forget the Jew. I must have the journal. You see that, don't you?
More than anything, I must have it." He held out a spindly arm laced with bulging veins. "Swear it to me. Swear you'll bring me what is mine."

Roth looked at the large swastika on the gray wall, sickened by Gerhard's weakness. He would make it right, because the Stones meant far more to him than they could possibly mean to his father.

"Come here," Roth said to the nurse.

Klaus glanced at Gerhard then stepped out from the shadows.

Roth backed up and stepped off the rug. There was the right way and the wrong way to do this, and the purest in mind knew the difference.

"Farther, to the middle of the rug," he said.

Klaus took another step so that he stood near the center of the rug.

"I would like to repay you for your care of my father," Roth said."Few men could put up with a whining old man the way you do. Is there anything you would like?"

No response. Of course not.

"Anything at all?"

The nurse lowered his head. "No sir."

Roth pulled out his gun and shot Klaus through the top of his head while he was still bent over. The slug likely ended up in his throat.

The man dropped in a pile.

Roth looked at his father. "You should have sent him out."

"You're working against your own kind," Gerhard said. "He was pure."

"Then I did him a favor by sending him to his grave pure."

First Chapter

Chapter One

Hamburg, Germany
July 17, 1973
Tuesday Morning

ROTH BRAUN SLOWLY TWISTED THE DOORKNOB AND GAVE THE door a slight shove. A familiar medicinal odor stung his nostrils. Outside, the sun warmed a midsummer day, but here in the dungeon below the house, the old man lived in perpetual twilight.

Roth imagined a Jew stepping into a delicing shower and let himself relish the horror he might feel in that moment of realizing that more than lice were meant to die in this chamber.

Roth was in a very good mood.

The smothering quiet was broken by the sound of the old prune's tarred, seventy-eight-year-old lungs rasping for relief. Gerhard's wheezing annoyed Roth, ruining his otherwise perfect mood.

The only living soul he despised more than the Jew who'd stolen his power was Gerhard, who had allowed the Jew to steal his power.

"Good morning, Father," Roth said. He closed the door quietly and stepped into the room, pushing aside a curtain of tinkling glass beads that separated it from the entryway. "You wanted to see me?"

His father looked at a servant, who busied himself over the table in the adjacent dining room.

"Leave us."

Even so, Roth hated him.

The servant dipped his head and exited through a side door. The steel door closed and the nurse flinched. Glass in a cabinet behind the table rattled despite the room's solid-concrete walls. The nineteenth-century Russian crystal--one of dozens of similar collections pilfered during the war--had once belonged to the czar. The Nazis' defeat should have sent Gerhard to the gallows; instead, the war had left his father with obscene wealth. The paintings alone had netted him a significant fortune, and these he owned legally. He'd shipped them to Zurich, where a hotly contested law made them his after remaining unclaimed for five years. Compliments of the Swiss Federation of Art Dealers.

Until the day I suck the energy from your bones, I will love you for showing me the way.
Until the day I suck the energy from your bones, I will despise you for what you did.

Gerhard held up a newspaper. "Have you read this?"

Roth walked across the circular rope rug that covered the black cement slab and stopped five feet from Gerhard. A hawk nose curved over his father's thin, trembling lips. Wispy strands of gray hair backlit by a yellow lamp hovered over his scalp. Skeletal, blue-veined fingers clutched what appeared to be a Los Angeles Times. A stack of newspapers--the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, London's Daily Telegraph, and a dozen others-- sat a half-meter thick on the small end table to his left. Gerhard routinely
spent six hours each day reading.

Gerhard flung the paper with a flick of his wrist, never removing his eyes from Roth. It landed on the floor with a smack.

"Read it."

The male nurse pretended to fiddle with the oxygen tank. Roth stood still. This attitude of Gerhard's was no longer simply ruining his mood, but destroying it altogether.

"I said, 'Read it'!"

Roth calmly bent and picked up the paper. The Los Angeles Times was folded around an article in the Life section, "Fortune Goes to Museum." Roth scanned the text. A wealthy woman, a Jew named Rachel Spritzer, sixty-two years of age, had died three days ago in Los Angeles. She'd been survived by no one and had donated her entire estate to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

"So another Jew's dead." Roth lowered the paper. "Your legacy lives on."

His father clutched the arms of his chair. "Read the rest."

His chest sounded like a whistle. If Roth wasn't a master of his own impulses, he might have done something stupid, such as kill the man. Instead, he set the paper on the windowsill and turned away. "You've read it, Father. Tell me what it says. I have a ten o'clock engagement."

"Cancel it."

Roth walked to the bar. Control. "Just tell me what has you so concerned."

"The Stones of David have me concerned."

Roth blinked. He poured a splash of cognac into a snifter.

"I'm finished chasing your ghosts." He swirled the brandy slowly before sipping it. "If the Stones still exist, we would have found them long ago."

Gerhard managed to stand, trembling from head to foot, red as a rooster around the neck.

"They have been found. And you know what that means."

He launched into a coughing fit. Roth's pulse quickened a hair and then eased. If the man wasn't dying, he was losing his mind. Surely the Stones hadn't been found after all this time.

"Read it!" Gerhard's eyes drilled him. So then maybe there was something to this.

Gerhard's obsession was for the journal that had gone missing with the Stones.

And Roth's obsession was for the power that had gone missing with the Jew who'd taken the journal.

He had spent nearly thirty years tracking down innumerable leads, searching in vain. There was no telling how much wealth had been stripped from the Jews when Hitler had gathered them up and sent them to the camps. Much of the fortune had been confiscated by the gestapo and recovered after the war, but a number of particularly valuable items-- priceless relics that belonged in museums or in vaults--had disappeared. Some of those treasures could be found in this very house. But any wellheeled collector knew that the most valuable collection had vanished for good in 1945.

The Stones of David.

One stunning item in Spritzer's collection is an extremely old golden medallion, better known as one of the five Stones of David. According to legend, the medallions are the actual stones selected by David to kill the giant Goliath. The smooth stones were subsequently gilded and stamped with the Star of David. The collection was last verified in 1307, when they were held by the Knights Templars. The collection was rumored to be held by a wealthy Jewish collector before World War II but went missing before the claim could be verified.

Alone, each medallion may be worth over $10,000,000. But the collection in its entirety is valued at roughly $100,000,000. The relic will be displayed in a museum yet to be disclosed with the following cryptic caption at Rachel Spritzer's request: "The Stones are like the lost orphans. They will eventually find each other."

Sweat cooled Roth's palms. He set the paper on the bar, set an unsteady finger in its margin, and scanned to the end.

Rachel Spritzer lived alone in an apartment complex she owned on La Brea Avenue and died a widow. The complex will be sold by the estate, along with much of Spritzer's noncollectible property.

Rudy and Rachel Spritzer immigrated to the United States sixteen years ago, five years before Rudy was killed in an automobile accident. (See B4.)

For a moment Roth's vision clouded. His mouth went dry

."Now I have your attention?" Gerhard demanded.

Roth read the article again, searching for any phrase that might undermine the possibility that this Jew could be anyone other than whom Gerhard was suggesting.

"She was sixty-two," Gerhard said. "The right age."

Roth's mind flashed back to those war years when he was only twelve. Even if the connections were only circumstantial, he could hardly ignore them.

"I knew the Jew survived," Gerhard said.

"She donated only one Stone. There were five."

"If one Stone exists, then the journal exists. Someone has that journal!"

"She's dead."

"You will make her speak from the grave." Gerhard swayed on his feet, right fist trembling. His eyes looked black in the basement's shadows."She knew. She knew about the journal."

"She's dead!" Roth snapped. He took a deep breath, irritated with himself for losing control. The fact was, Gerhard's history with the Stones gave him knowledge that no one else could possibly have.

"You know well enough that the journal implicates the entire line of elders. It lists each of our names and the names of the women we killed. It must be found!"

Mention of the women triggered a coppery taste in the back of Roth's mouth. The last time he'd seen the journal, it contained 243 names. Roth would one day surpass that number, he had vowed it.

But even a thousand or ten thousand would not compensate for the one that had escaped Gerhard

."That woman would toy with me even in her death," the old man said. "In her house, in her belongings--somewhere, the old bat left a trail. You will go to Los Angeles." The nurse, Klaus, moved to assist Gerhard back to his seat, but the old man shook him off. Klaus retreated.

Gerhard was right. The Stones could lead to the journal. The journal could lead to the Jew. The Jew would lead to power, a supernatural power that his father had never attained. But Roth would.

The prospect of finding the Jew after so many years felt delightfully obscene.

Roth realized that his fingers were trembling.

"The United States," Roth said absently. "We don't have the same liberties there."

"That's never stopped you before."

The notion swarmed Roth like bees from a disturbed hive. Hope. More than hope--a desperate urgency to possess. Pounding heart, dry mouth. He was no fool. He would neither fight the emotion nor show it. After lingering so long on the edges of his mind, the desire to possess this one lost hope swallowed him. This is what Roth lived for, the purest form of power found in the very emotion that at this very moment raged through his body.

In his mind's eye he was already flying to America. He would have to move quickly, set the trap immediately. There was no telling how long they would keep the old Jew's collectibles in Los Angeles.

He remembered the first dead Jew he'd seen in the camps twenty-eight years ago. He'd been eating fresh eggs and sausage prepared by one of the Polish servants from the village for breakfast. It was the most delicious breakfast he'd ever tasted. Perhaps leaving his mother in Germany to spend the summer with his father up in Poland would be a good thing after all. He was twelve at the time.

"Papa?"

"What?" his father asked, walking toward the window overlooking the concentration camp.

"Why do Polish eggs taste better than German eggs?

" His father pulled back the curtain, and Roth saw a woman hanging from the main gate. Gerhard answered him, but Roth didn't hear the response. The year was 1942, and hers was the first of many dead bodies Roth would see in Poland. But there was something about the first.

Roth let the memory linger, then returned his mind to the Stones.His father's eyes glistened with tears; his face wrinkled.

"The Jew took my soul. She took my soul! I beg you, my son." Roth felt a terrible pity for him. A single tear broke free and ran down Gerhard's right cheek.

"If the Jew is alive, she will be drawn by the Stone," Roth said.

"Forget the Jew. I must have the journal. You see that, don't you? More than anything, I must have it." He held out a spindly arm laced with bulging veins. "Swear it to me. Swear you'll bring me what is mine."

Roth looked at the large swastika on the gray wall, sickened by Gerhard's weakness. He would make it right, because the Stones meant far more to him than they could possibly mean to his father.

"Come here," Roth said to the nurse.

Klaus glanced at Gerhard then stepped out from the shadows.

Roth backed up and stepped off the rug. There was the right way and the wrong way to do this, and the purest in mind knew the difference.

"Farther, to the middle of the rug," he said.

Klaus took another step so that he stood near the center of the rug.

"I would like to repay you for your care of my father," Roth said."Few men could put up with a whining old man the way you do. Is there anything you would like?"

No response. Of course not.

"Anything at all?"

The nurse lowered his head. "No sir."

Roth pulled out his gun and shot Klaus through the top of his head while he was still bent over. The slug likely ended up in his throat.

The man dropped in a pile.

Roth looked at his father. "You should have sent him out."

"You're working against your own kind," Gerhard said. "He was pure."

"Then I did him a favor by sending him to his grave pure."

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Sensitivemuse

Posted March 7, 2010

more from this reviewer

Thrilling page turner

This has been an addictive page turner. It's kept me on pins and needles. There were times where I couldn't bear to turn the page because I just didn't want to know if the character was going to encounter an ugly end, or a great success. However I just had to keep going and read it because I really wanted to know what happened. The action and the plot were well written and it just keeps you on edge. It's been a very suspenseful plot and a very thrilling ride.

Stephen as a character is what makes the story funny and keeps the action going as he keeps on pressing towards his goal. I say it's funny because there were just things Stephen had to do which just made me laugh out loud. Roth on the other hand, makes the story very chilling and dark, he's your average villain, but add more evil (about 3 cups) and take away the soul and you get Roth. I have never read a villain such as this and he would most likely end up on my top ten villain list. He was just very real, and oozes evil (he even has the black ensemble to match it). Of all the characters mentioned though, I liked Ruth. Her strength, and her ability to see the good and be able to hold onto hope even when she was surrounded by death and hopelessness was very admirable.

Considering the author is known more for his Christian fiction, and he does make references to faith and God in his works, the book did not seem preachy at all. It did not get in the way of the plot. So those who aren't into Christian fiction like I am, the story really has nothing to do with God, or anything of any religious denomination. Just read it for the plot, and the spine chilling events. You'll be a satisfied reader like I was. Obsession does play a major theme in this book; both from Stephen's side, and from Roth's.

What frustrated me about the story is certain parts of the book where the characters decide to just stop and hesitate and think about what they're doing when they should be running out the door and running like hell. I don't get it. I felt like jumping in and kicking them towards the exit and to stop thinking and blubbering like idiots. It was extremely frustrating and annoying.

Overall though, an excellent page turner with all the right plot twists and thrilling moments at the right times. Give this a read if you want a great thrilling ride

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted February 17, 2009

Book Review

Obsessed was completely wicked! Just when you think you have it figured out, the plot takes another twist. The story combines many character's stories in one crazy, hectic, breathtaking ride. If you like suspense, or mystery, or are just bored, you should read this book.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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8338991

Posted June 24, 2011

My all time favorite dekker novel!

Im a huge fan of ted dekker but this is my favorite of them all! This is one book that no matter how many times i have read it i will alwaya pick it up again. I highly recommend this book to anyone, but especially to those who like historical fiction.
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Cougar_H

Posted December 16, 2010

more from this reviewer

Obsessed has my attention!

One theme I found in Ted Dekker's book Obsessed was, like the title sates, obsession. Obsession can be communicated through a lot of different things. Just a few of these things are love, ideas, and desires. Obsessions dominate your thoughts with one of those things. In the story we meet Stephen Friedman, an orphan of WWII that had moved to the United States, living in California in 1973. He finds out that his mother is a Jewish woman that had survived the Torun work camp during the Holocaust. Stephen's mother dies before he meets her and leaves behind a Jewish relic, one of the 5 Stones of David. Stephen forms an obsession for this idea of the Stone of David. Not only are the gold stones valuable, they are the key to Stephen's past. "The Stones are like the lost orphans. They will eventually find each other." That's another part of the Stones of David and their history. This saying could be said to be the motto of Roth Braun, the son of the SS Officer that ran Torun during the Holocaust. Roth is on a mission to complete what his father had started many years ago. He also forms and obsession to find what Stephen's mother, Rachel, had left behind; the Stones of David, belongings that survived the war, and Stephen. I found the book interesting and it grabbed my attention. When I'd got a chance to read, it would be at large chunks of pages at a time because I got caught up in the characters. I liked Obsessed because of the vivid descriptions and emotion. A little spoiler: one of my favorite parts was when Stephen snuck into his mother's old home dressed as a woman. I don't think you'll be disappointed when you pick up this book.
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DoctorBOOK

Posted June 24, 2010

I Also Recommend:

Must Read by Ted Dekker

If you are interested in Ted Dekker books this is a MUST READ!! If you have never read a book, or a Ted Dekker book it is an Amazing/Great book to start with. It isn't in a series, its just a single book. One story. But probably one of my favorites!! Will never put it down!! Read the first couple chapters get past the explaining part and...BOOOOM it hits you with a suspensful mystery that keeps you on the edge!!! If you are a fann of National Treasure the movie, it is definitely similiar with a Christian touch to it, that in my opinion only believers will understand.
BUY THIS!!!
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James_Crow

Posted May 22, 2009

more from this reviewer

Obsessed!

Obsessed is a great piece of literature. It is a full of suspense, and romance. Dekker uses his geniousness in this book in the way he combines romance and drama. It is a story about a man who is looking for a treasure, which so many if us can relate to. If you are looking for a good book to read, this is the one!
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TabA

Posted April 10, 2009

more from this reviewer

I Also Recommend:

Dekker does it again. He'll have you glued to your seat and lost in a story, while delivery a life lesson on what obsession really is.

Words cannot express how wonderful a novel "The Shack," by William P. Young, is. I will try to tell you about it because I am strongly convinced that every person that has eyes to read, or ears to hear, should hear this story.
Missy, a little girl, is kidnapped and presumed dead. This sends her introverted father, Mack even further into himself. One day he gets a note from "Papa" inviting him back to the shack where he discovered Missy was dead. You must understand this one thing; "Papa" is Mack's wife's endearing term for God, which only those closest to them know. She had a good relationship with her father, Mack did not.
A friend found out I was reading this book and asked me if I had met God yet. When you read this book you will understand why this question is so incredibly significant. God, through this book, will blow your mind when it comes to who He really is and how your relationship with Him can really be. I can guarantee you that your life will never be the same. So I dare you to read this book. Personal beliefs does not matter, just read it.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted March 2, 2009

Riveting

I had a hard time putting book down. It was different from books I normally read. Diffently recommend reading
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Anonymous

Posted September 10, 2008

great book to be absorbed into

This was another outstanding book by my favorite Author Ted Dekker. His creativity keeps you turning in circles until the big picture is revealed in the end. This was no exception. I also like his methods of making people understand that there is more to out there then what you see, and how your life can be changed in an instant. This was an overall great read. However I would suggest reading THREE also by Ted Dekker
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Anonymous

Posted June 13, 2008

I Never Read And Couldnt Put This One Down.

For the past four years I havent read a book unless it was assigned in school and even then I never read I just printed off some footnotes. But I was driving to FL from IL long Ride and nothing to do and found obsessed in my moms purse I started reading And could not put it down! I read the whole book in three days!!! I still dont read often but when I do I read Ted Dekker
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Anonymous

Posted August 11, 2007

A reviewer

I love all Ted Dekker books and this was no exception. It took me a few chapters to get into it but I found it to be a page-turner after that.
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Anonymous

Posted June 4, 2007

Not what I expected

I'm a huge Dekker fan, but as the book went on I became less and less interested. I finally realized I was half way through the book and still wasn't into it. I read about 80 more pages and then finally stopped. Dekker has made so much better. I mean Thr3e was a masterpiece, The circle trilogy was so emotionally gripping, Showdown was stupendous. Obsessed was..... well, lacking. I felt the same way with Blessed Child, I couldn't finish that either. But I still love Dekker, but this is definately not his best
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Anonymous

Posted July 31, 2007

Definitely worth a read

This is one of my more favorite books. This was my first Dekker book to read and i thoroughly enjoyed it. After reading several others, this is still one of my favorites. The constantly changing of scenes and decades kept me on my toes and kept me turning the pages. Dont pass up a chance to read this book.
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Anonymous

Posted March 13, 2007

Surprised

Great but what a surprise. I had a hard time putting it down and was really surprised at the story line. Loved it!
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Anonymous

Posted March 24, 2006

Couldn't wait to put it down...

Book was NOT a page turner for me. I truly enjoyed the Turon storyline, but found the present day storyline totally annoying and unrealistic. The book would have been perfect if the writer had started with Turon and entered present day hero to finish up. The Obsession would have focused then on Roth and not Stephen, which is fine by me. Once the past and the present joined, the book was wonderful.
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Anonymous

Posted January 17, 2006

dekker does it again

obsessed is a fast paced novel, believe me, i couldn't put it down. there were revelations that left me breathless, yet the end still suprises you. dekker once more delivers the kind of novel that you can't guess from page one, you are constantly evolving your theories.
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Anonymous

Posted August 27, 2005

Brilliant and Breathtaking

Don¿t start if you don¿t have time to finish. Aptly named, Obsessed will grab your imagination and not let go. Psychological thrillers are rarely my cup of tea, so I resisted this one for a long time. It is brilliant, breathtaking, and paced at a sprint from start to finish. It is hard to put a finger on any one strength. If there are weaknesses, the principal ones may be that the pacing never lets up ¿ and the ending is almost too perfect (for this reviewer¿s taste) ¿ yet I was consumed (obsessed?) by the need to reach that ending. The adrenaline pumping pace held competition with the desire to take in every word ¿ the urgency to skim and so keep up with the narrative held competition with the brilliant writing that held too many gems to rush past. As a writer myself I am always searching for that elusive quality that raises one work above the crowd. Ted Dekker has captured that quality in Obsessed.
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Anonymous

Posted April 25, 2005

outstanding

Ted Dekkar seems to write books that once you pick them up its impossible to put them down. I just love all of his books. It seems that every book gets better and yet I can not understand how he can continuely out do himself---but he always does.
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harstan

Posted December 9, 2008

more from this reviewer

engaging suspense thriller

In 1973 Hamburg, Germany, Gerhard Braun is upset because of an article in the American newspapers that refer to the five Stones of David. He has wanted the stones since they escaped his grasp during World War II because he believes that the female Jew who sucked his soul would finally die. His son Dekker could not care less about a concentration camp survivor or the stones, but knows that near the stones is the incriminating journal that lists the names of the ¿Elders¿ and the two hundred plus women they abused and killed. He wonders who this Rachel Spritzer is.--- In Los Angeles realtor Stephen Friedman lives the good life, but always wondered about his family who probably died during the war in Poland. Though obsessed to know what happened, he gave up a long time ago until now. His Rabbi informs him that Rachel Spritzer had branded her concentration camp newborn with half of a Stone of David; she could have been Stephen¿s mother. He digs into the life of Rachel, but is unaware that Roth is coming to clean up another of his father¿s mistakes as he has done for much of the last three decades.--- This engaging suspense thriller rotates back and forth between 1973 and the War using the 1940s as a base for the 1970s cat and mouse game between the second generation offspring. The concentration camp scenes are graphic, compelling and realistically sadistic (not for everyone) leaving readers with empathy for the victims and a bad taste as the Elders use an organized sponsored ism to condone what they do to the Jews. This is a taut thriller in which the grounds for torture, rape and murder is Nazism.--- Harriet Klausner
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Anonymous

Posted November 16, 2004

Perfect blend of suspense and humor.

Wow! I don't know what the PW reviewer was on when they read this book. As a reader of many thirllers trust me, this book is a killer, no pun intended. I was fortuntate enough to read a galley of this wonderful novel. If you liked Thr3e, you'll love Obsessed. Gone are the days when very basic, stale plots gave us yet one more book to waste our minds on. Dekker has a unique knack for combining plot elelments that make you laugh and think at the same time; give you chills and thrills back to back. Obsessed is the story of an Obsession that is born in a Nazi prison camp and finaly plays out in all of its glory in the mid seventies. I won't give away the plot except to say that the protagonist, Stephen Friedman, and the antagonist, Roth Braun, are both after the same invaluable relic. But as with all of Dekker's books, in the end it's so much more. It's edgy, maybe more so than PW would like good old fashioned Christian fiction to be. But Dekker doesn't strike me as the gook old fashion type. He a leader in a new generation of moral writers. As for me, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the day that there are another ten authors who write books like this.
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Thrilling page turner

Book Review

My all time favorite dekker novel!

Obsessed has my attention!

Must Read by Ted Dekker

Obsessed!

Dekker does it again. He'll have you glued to your seat and lost in a story, while delivery a life lesson on what obsession really is.

Riveting

great book to be absorbed into

I Never Read And Couldnt Put This One Down.

A reviewer

Not what I expected

Definitely worth a read

Surprised

Couldn't wait to put it down...

dekker does it again

Brilliant and Breathtaking

outstanding

engaging suspense thriller

Perfect blend of suspense and humor.