PROJECT CAIN

Weaponized serial-killer clones are on the loose, and one of their own teams up with the agent who’s hunting them down.

A secret government/corporate program has cloned the United States’ most notorious serial killers and fostered them to families. Some families were paid to mistreat the clones; others treated the clones with kindness. Sixteen-year-old Jeff Jacobson is astonished to learn he’s the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer and that the man who has raised him is the lead scientist on the cloning project. When his dad vanishes, and six of the cloned killers lay waste to their private school, Department of Defense agent Shawn Castillo takes Jeff with him on the trail of the killers. The duo follow clues in Dr. Jacobson’s notes and a bloody path of destruction to find the clones and, perhaps, an even more insidious biological weapon made from their blood. Jeff’s nearly dialogue-free narration is peppered with minilectures on serial killers, the life stories of various characters and ludicrous science. Girard’s debut for teens is an alternate version of his adult debut, Cain’s Blood, which releases simultaneously and features the same story and characters, only from a different point of view. This late-to-the-dance serial-killer tome succeeds only on two fronts—making serial killers seem boring and science funny—and pales in comparison to the similarly themed novels of Dan Wells and Barry Lyga.

Stick with Wells and Lyga; this muddle is just plain insulting.