Death and Birth of Iliana Marek

A young man with a tragic past finds an unlikely protector in a strangely altered enforcer of his backwater town. In his immutable style, Edgar Award winner David Liss (The Peculiarites) incorporates the elements of a crime novel within a satirical combination of sci-fi, justice, and mercy in 21st-century America. Who is Iliana Marek? Is she the bully who alongside her foster father police chief Bryce Hillard, controls and terrorizes Tylor, Florida? Or is she the reborn guardian angel of Dan Gibson, a social pariah responsible for the suicide of Faye Kristic, a death that he cannot remember ten years later? Dan's once-promising future is in tatters. He lives in an apartment on his estranged parents' property, works at a convenience store with a terrible boss, and is addicted to prescription drugs. But ten years after Faye's death, Iliana suddenly takes Dan's side, and a lot of bad people start dying fast. As Dan becomes entangled in the ensuing chaos, he needs to finally discover what part he played in the death of Faye Kristic, and why the changes to Iliana make her no longer entirely human. In a novel as though Carl Hiaasen had collaborated with Michael Crichton, David Liss's newest work is a powerfully astute, entertaining allegory right out of today's headlines.