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.

From the Hardcover edition.

A bereaved doctor undertakes a diabolical reproductive cloning experiment. At three, Justin Finn looks like any other child, but his face one day will be the exact match of a cold-blooded killer of whom he is a perfect genetic replica. How far should someone go to look their daughter's killer in the eye?

This icily innovative thriller begins with every parent’s worst nightmare, when Davis Moore’s teenage daughter is brutally raped and murdered by an unknown assailant. It gets worse. For Davis Moore is a fertility doctor, dealing with cutting-edge genetic reproductive techniques. It’s a controversial and dangerous occupation: Moore has already been the object of a fanatic’s assassination attempt. But for a father driven half-mad by grief, his work presents one startling and dangerous opportunity–the chance to look into the face of his daughter’s killer.

Kevin Guilfoile has written for McSweeney’s, Salon, The New Republic and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Chicago with his wife and child.