Project Cain

Gr 9 Up—Sixteen-year-old Jeff Jacobson, a clone, is named for his genetic source, Jeffrey Dahmer. This "lab rat with jeans" grew up with other clones who all had one thing in common: their source cells were from serial killers. The scientists who conducted Project Cain put morality aside and purposefully exposed some of the clones to abuse and neglect to replicate the upbringings of men such as Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and Henry Lee Lucas. When his home is raided and his scientist father disappears, Jeff goes on the run with a military tough guy, Castillo, who was supposed to turn him in but instead works with him to track down boys who escaped and who are already taking actions that demonstrate their murderous genes. The story uses a scaffold of conspiracy theories including government payoffs and mind-control projects. Jeff is tormented by the knowledge that he may be programmed to kill, and, when he begins to see visions involving Dahmer's victims and seems to develop telepathic communication with the other clones, he and Castillo realize that the project involves more than just raising clones to see how nature versus nurture works. Project Cain includes real-life police photos of the killers, and some descriptions get a bit gory. Buy where Barry Lyga's I Hunt Killers, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Drowned Cities (both Little, Brown, 2012), and perhaps Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs (St. Martin's, 1988) and James Lilliefors's The Leviathan Effect (Soho, 2013) have found readers.—Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX