Cast of Shadows: A Novel

I really wanted to like this book. It was recommended in some forum somewhere where supposedly smart people were discussing another book I really liked and someone suggested this was a good one in the same vein. It wasn't. Poor character development. Some of them don't ever have backstory. Some characters are introduced only to further a single plot point and then disregarded. Entire sub-plots are introduced and go nowhere. Too much emphasis on a twist ending that could be seen miles away. (Although admittedly the author sprinkled in so many clues that this, perhaps, was his intent.) It disappointed me, and I'm glad I'm done and can move on. That said, I'll give it as many stars as I have because the writing (the prose) itself wasn't show more bad. I've certainly read worse writing before and I suspect Guilfoile could turn out a good book if he abandoned cliches and gimmicks and focused more on his characters. show less

How far would you go to look into the face of your daughter's murderer? Dr. Davis Moore does controversial work at a clinic, providing the childless with children, not through in vitro but by cloning from anonymous DNA. There are strict codes governing the procedure, including that the person from whom the DNA is taken must be dead.
When his teenage daughter is raped and murdered, Davis uses the semen left in her body as the genetic basis of a cloned baby. He hopes that when the baby grows up he will somehow be able to use him to identify his daughter's murderer.
The people who do this work are being targetted by an organisation called the Hand of God, that employs a killer to see that high profile pro-cloners and scientists are killed. show more Although these pressures, together with the death of his daughter, lead to Moore retiring from active practice, he follows the growth of Justin, the baby cloned from the rapists' semen, with interest, and attempts to track the rapist down.
Not only is this a really creepy idea but the story raises some big issues about cloning - is the cloned baby the absolute identical twin of the person whose DNA it was cloned on? For example, will the murderer whose DNA was used also have the distinctive birthmark the baby has? Conversely, does genetic make up determine how you think, what you become in life? Will the baby grow up to be a murderer? If the baby is cloned from adult DNA will the baby have an adult or a child mind? Will the child feel connecetd to the adult?
I didn't "see" the ending of this novel coming. There are things revealed in the final 50 pages that you won't predict, so if you find it a bit of a long read like I did, hang in there!
This book has won a couple of awards too - A CHICAGO TRIBUNE and KANSAS CITY STAR BEST BOOK of 2005, and The Best First Novel of 2005 in the Love Is Murder Readers' Choice Poll - and was a finalist in the 2005 Great Lakes Book Awards. show less

In the near future, cloning is legal. Dr. Davis Moore is a fertility doctor specializing in reproductive cloning.

His daughter, AK is raped and murdered. The killer escapes and when Dr. Moore picks up AK's belongings, he obtains a sample of the killer's DNA. With no other way to identify the killer, he clones a child with the killer's DNA so the child will grow up to be the exact replica of the killer.

Mickey the Gerund is a religious fanatic and member of the group the Hands of God. He feels he's a soldier in God's army whose mission is to destroy fertility clinics and the doctors running them. He'd dubbed Byron Bonavarti by the press.

The novel proceeds at a leisurly pace which allows the suspense to build. It spans many years and we see show more the baby, Justin Finn, born and grow older.

The author provides information about the moral and ethical considerations of cloning. Our interest heightens as Justin turns various ages and develops an avid interest in serial killers and in Bryron Bonavarti.

With haunting prose, Justin seems to become more like his cloned father and we wonder if the author has cloned another mass murderer.

There are some excellent surprises and twists along the way which add to the interest.

The author has delivered a unique and interesting novel pitting the forces of good against evil and we wonder which side will win. show less

I'm giving this high ratings because I really just did not see the ending coming! The story seemed a little slow for a while but then it took off and didn't stop. Of course it was highly contrived and circumstances were over the top with how they worked out but I'm impressed with what the author pulled together.

Fifteen minutes from now, with cloning a common technique, a grieving doctor decides to use the DNA of the unidentified man who raped and murdered his daughter to make a child so that he can look into the face of the killer. He has a private investigator follow the child, Justin, as Justin grows. His obsession leads his wife to suspect an affair, so she hires another PI, with catastrophic results. The consequences just keep on spreading out like ripples in a very shallow pond. The speculations about identity, both with respect to cloning and to another element of the plot – a popular virtual reality game so detailed that people can live their offline lives in it “true to life�€? – are interesting, but not enough to show more fully offset often clunky exposition and plot twists as regular as a circular staircase. Airport reading. More favorable review from Salon here. show less

A very interesting and well developed book, it's overly complex at times (the person before me was reduced to writing notes in the library book to keep track of events), but it all spawns from a very interesting premise and is a good read if you can get through it.

Interesting what if story. A doctor who cloning humans (legally), clones his daughter’s killer so he can one day look into his face. Creepy and interesting story about ethics and assumptions.