Misbegotten

A brilliantly constructed thriller by a 26 year old Harvard law student exposing the dark side of suburbia and depicting an inconceivably chilling character in episodes of mounting horror. This is Stephen King meets Ira Levin; Rosemary’s Baby with a background of artificial insemination.

Billy Crapshoot is an immaculate dresser who always sports a pink carnation, even in the dead of winter. He’s a cab driver. But he’s also a carjacker, a killer and an obsessive con man. He sees an ad in the paper: Sperm Donor – Fifty Dollars a sample – Inseminology Institute. “That could be easy money”, he thinks, and a new con begins to form in his mind. The unwitting recipient of his sperm is Caitlin Bourke, a romantic with a blonde bob, who lives in six acres of rich suburbia and is married to a pompous man who can father a company – but not a child. They agree that she will be impregnated by artificial insemination never dreaming of the horror the conception of the misbegotten child will bring. Then Caitlin becomes obsessed with discovering the identity of the donor.

She should never have asked.