My Immaculate Assassin - Softcover

A native of Ivanhoe, Virginia, David Huddle has lived in Vermont for over four decades. He is the author of twenty previous books, including fiction, essays, and poetry. His novel Nothing Can Make Me Do This (Tupelo, 2011) won the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction, and his Black Snake at the Family Reunion won the Pen New England Award for Poetry. A longtime resident of Vermont, he teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English and the Rainier Writing Workshop.

"A sharp and canny cultural observer and versatile novelist, Huddle (The Faulkes Chronicle, 2014) takes the notion of 'be careful what you wish for' to its most eerie and depraved conclusion in this erotically charged and darkly motivated novel of lust and retribution. A middle-aged spinster with a government security clearance and wicked-mad computer skills, Maura Nelson makes good on the Apple slogan that 'there's an app for that' when she develops a program combining DNA and GPS technology that can assassinate a person with just the click of a mouse. She's already used it to take out Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad and make it look like he died from natural causes. Now she and her new lover, Jack Plymouth, point her laser of death on those they, and they alone, deem worthy: a Supreme Court justice, a radio talkshow host, a TV-news pundit, an abuser of small boys, and a defiler of young girls. Their actions do not stay entirely below the radar, however, and their emotions do not stay in check, making this a literary thriller with a moral conundrum. Though Huddle thinly alters the identities of Maura's targets, making the satire juicy and fun, the notion of impulsive revenge is an unnerving and alarming one in an era of taunting rhetoric and random violence." -- Carol Haggas --Booklist starred review

"A vividly striking yet subtly nuanced portrait of a family's past and future emerges despite, or perhaps because of, a present mired in perplexing uncertainty and assured grief. A marvel." --Booklist

"A profoundly moving meditation on death, on a great and unsentimental familial love, on the role of storytelling, and on how hard it is to say goodbye to a beautiful life." --Jane McCafferty --Praise for Huddle's previous novel, The Faulkes Chronicle