The Lupin Gene is a Finalist for The Claymore Award

The Claymore

Just received word. Truly honored by the reviewers. This darkly suspenseful thriller also addresses a greater theme. I can't help but hope that helped with their impression. More about the book below.

The Lupin Gene

Tagline:

You are the next step in human evolution – beautiful, gifted, immortal, perfect, the true story behind history’s most significant events…so why is someone trying to kill you?

Summary and themes:

Troubled, brilliant Washington D.C. homicide detective, Maya Dominguez, finds herself investigating not one, but two sets of serial killings with seemingly supernatural characteristics. One involves gang members killed by blunt force trauma beyond any human power. The other is characterized by charcoal textured corpses metabolically boiled to desiccation with a mangled silver bullet in each chest.  As the investigation continues, Maya discovers a race of beings, the Lupin, who are the real story behind history's most significant events, from the Battle of Hastings to the Crusades to the D-Day landing. They are also the next step in human evolution – physically perfect, athletically endowed, and impervious to disease, aging, and injury save one fatal vulnerability that has been used to exploit and enslave them throughout time. Occupying the highest levels of corporations, professional sports, and Hollywood, they are a secret society surviving by one rule. “Never reveal our true nature.” Now it is up to Maya to put a stop to their murderers, or else risk losing everything, including her one true love, who is unbeknownst to her, is one of them. I like to think of it as Outlander meets The Desert Saint.

On a greater, and in my opinion, more interesting level this is a story of race, class, and oppression and their impact on those who suffer from as represented by the historical vignettes that tell the Lupin backstory.

The treatment and exploitation of the Lupin is analogous to the dehumanizing tactics used to justify all social abuses, combatant atrocities on a battlefield, and even genocide. It’s a subtle representation of the sociological idea that the first step in abuse is to create a persona in the target that is not truly human. Then anything barbaric is possible and indeed likely. In that way the social segregation of Maya due to her sex, race, and even her beauty in the police culture is a similar parallel.

Blending elements of a thriller, investigative, supernatural, sci-fi and history. It is a cross genre thrill ride.