This novel marks the return of Danny Hansen and Renee Gilmore, two characters introduced in The Priest’s Graveyard. Dekker uses these two broken characters to plumb out answers to some practical and deeply philosophical questions. How should we confront evil? Where is the balance between loving one’s enemies and stopping injustice? How can sinful men rightly judge and condemn other sinful men? Does the prison system actually work? How does a person truly change at their core?
Danny is a vigilante ex-priest struggling to make sense of a childhood marred by violence and war. He has been in prison for seven years serving a fifty year sentence for his confession to two high-profile murders. Now filled with remorse, Danny has taken a vow of non-violence. This vow is challenged when he is transferred to an experimental prison focused on getting deviants to recognize the depths of their evil. Warden Pape considers himself God and ruthlessly pushes inmates to the brink of sanity to maintain control.
Renee Gilmore is Danny’s “wife” and connection to the outside. Their love story began in The Priest’s Graveyard when he saved her from the very prison sentence he now serves. Renee struggles to put her life back together and visits Danny in prison every week until he is transferred to Basal. It is then that she receives a gruesome delivery and a series of death threats on Danny’s life. She cannot function without him and immediately jumps into the struggle against sadistic machinations intent on Danny’s destruction.
Dekker does not disappoint in this inherently theological thriller.