In his debut novel \Cast of Shadows,"" Kevin Guifoile passes the test for detail but fails for consistency. He embarks on a surreal story of cloning and murder-comes close to brilliance several times-but forces too many scenarios onto his audience, distracting them from the story.
Davis Moore is a Chicago fertility doctor who embarks on a twisted experiment when his daughter is brutally raped and murdered. Consumed by grief, he takes the killer's DNA and impregnates one of his patients to create Justin Finn, a young boy who will one day give him the clue he desperately needs.
Justin becomes a teenager with staggering intelligence, smart enough to track down his predecessor-but also shows obsessions with fire and animals that betray a darker undercurrent. As Justin grows up, he leads Moore down roads he did not anticipate, forcing his ""father"" to ask questions and reach conclusions he never wanted.
The plot sounds like something out of the latest Robert DeNiro movie-complete with the obligatory creepy child-but unlike those films ""Cast of Shadows"" has a surprising level of detail. Guilfoile clearly did his homework on medical research, making Moore's cloning techniques and supporting speeches sound real.
Unfortunately, this level of detail is not balanced with the plot, as Guilfoile goes off on so many different directions, it is hard figuring out which ideas are important. He seems so caught up in making a complex thriller that he brings in every angle, such as conflicted cops, small-town athletes and kinky sex. Guifoile tries to make every paragraph into an adventure.
The large amount of plots and characters feels more like excess than adventure, making the story unbalanced. A terrorist known as Mickey the Gerund is an excellent villain-pious and professional-but only makes guest appearances every ten or so chapters. Conversely, a virtual reality game known as Shadow World dominates the second half of the story, making fake lives more important than finding a real killer.
The confusion of the main plots is only made worse because every character has their own subplots of misery. Moore becomes bitter and quiet as time goes on, and his pill-popping wife has more mental problems than the killers. Justin's mother Martha drives away everyone around her.
The book manages to command the reader's attention but it sometimes feels like an obligation-you have invested so much time and effort into it that you need to know how it closes. In this case, Guilfoile has certainly made the bad horror movie mistake, creating an ending that tries to be a dramatic turn but makes 90 percent of the book-subplots and all-seem like a waste.
Past the halfway point in the book Moore reads a mystery novel he calls ""terrible and exciting,"" a phrase that summarizes ""Cast of Shadows."" Its descriptions and scenarios are well done but done too much, leaving anyone who reads it confused.
