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A bereaved doctor undertakes a diabolical
experiment in a shattering philosophical thriller that anticipates
the moral, social, and metaphysical dilemmas science is poised
to confront.Davis Moore is a fertility doctor in Chicago specializing
in reproductive cloning, a controversial and closely regulated
new practice, when his seventeen-year-old daughter is brutally
raped and murdered. The case is investigated but never solved.
Months later, Moore retrieves her belongings from the police,
and finds among them a vial containing the killer’s
DNA. Tormented by grief, Moore entertains a monstrous thought:
the possibility of cloning not his daughter but the man who
killed her. How far would you go to look into the face of
your daughter’s murderer?
Justin Finn, at three, looks like any other child. Bright,
joyful, sweet; an innocent toddler to his unsuspecting parents
and to all who know him. But his face, one day, will be the
exact match of the cold-blooded killer of whom he is a perfect
genetic replica. Can a three-year-old have a past? Where does
evil come from?
What happens to the soul when we die? What are you duplicating
when you duplicate a human life?
Cast of Shadows is a spectacularly original, hair-raising
novel about the fate of a little boy brought into the world
to solve a crime. Relentlessly gripping, profoundly unsettling,
and visionary, it introduces a major new suspense novelist.
Kevin Guilfoile has written for
McSweeney’s, Salon, and The New Republic.
He lives in Chicago with his wife and child.
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