Deborah's Defilers antidote to The Da Vinci Code?

Here's Sean Durkan's write up from Embassy: Canada's Foreign Policy Newsweekly

Deborah's Defilers an Antidote to Da Vinci's Code?

Hidden in all the fuss over the release of the movie version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is the growing demand for good, exciting fiction with a positive Christian twist. Former CBC journalist Deborah Gyapong is hoping to tap into it with her first novel, The Defilers.

Ms. Gyapong, who left the CBC to work in the Canadian Alliance, and now covers Parliament Hill for the Catholic and Evangelical newspapers, will launch the novel at the National Archives on June 1.

Ms. Gyapong originally began writing her suspense novel a couple of years ago for the U.S. market, where the Christian-lit phenomenon had already taken off, but found the Canadian setting and gritty gothic plot did not work for publishers there.

"Much of what Christian publishing had to offer put me in danger of getting spiritual diabetes because the stories were so treacly sweet," says Ms. Guapong. "I fell between the cracks: too raw and controversial for the Christian market, too Christian for the secular market."

Ms. Gyapong stuck with the more "gothic" theme, hoping to appeal to Christians such as herself who had "not led sheltered lives." American tastes have apparently matured because the publishers have now decided to also release the gritty novel in the U.S. this year as well as Canada.

The story remains far from treacly sweet. Heroine Linda Donner is originally from Boston but moved as a kid to Nova Scotia. Seduced by a priest as a teenager, she stopped believing in God. Now a Mountie, she investigates a pastor she suspects is guilty of arson, murder and child abuse, and finds herself pitted against evil supernatural forces that drive her to the edge of a nervous breakdown. The twist is she finds herself seeking God's help -- aided by the very pastor she suspected of committing terrible crimes.

Ms. Gyapong says she hopes her novel will serve as a counterpoint to the Gnostic messages of books like The Da Vinci Code.