Twin Peaks meets The Da Vinci Code in this surpassingly weird debut.
—Kirkus Reviews

320 pages  |  $24.95 (cloth)  |  $12.95 (paper) | add to cart

Who is Shayla Hacker? summary

A lonely man in a large city dials a random phone number and is confronted with a desperate cry for help. A 17-year-old-small-town-girl is abandoned by her older brother. A man flees on the eve of his wedding, in pursuit of a woman he’s never met—but whose photograph is hauntingly familiar. A detective discovers an unsolved case in the back of his files. A blue-collar contractor uncovers a mysterious box behind some drywall in an airport. Separated by a continent, they are bound by a question—Who is Shayla Hacker?

Praise for Who is Shayla Hacker?

Evan Kilgore’s debut novel is an amazing piece of work. From the fist few lines it feels like something a little different, something special. Kilgore has a wonderful ability to draw in the reader, it’s almost scary how far along in the book I was when I looked up and noticed that I was halfway done with it. The characters are people that you are instantly interested in and care about, and the way they keep circling each other is pure genius, like a avant-garde ballet choreographed by a genius madman. The descriptions in the book took me to the place the characters went and are still in my head. This book is going to stay with me for some time to come. I can safely say that Evan Kilgore is a fantastic writer and I am a fan for life.
—Crimespree Magazine

Traces of a mysterious young woman cause havoc.One day Gregory Klein is punching numbers randomly into his telephone; the next, after a cryptic conversation with the stranger on the other end and a visit from the highly suspicious LAPD, he’s chasing across the country to find her. Jackie Savage, abandoned at her high school by the brother who usually picks her up, accepts a ride in a chauffeured limo and is whisked off into a fairy tale gone wrong. Hours after finding a photograph labeled “Hacker-19?” wedged under the pillow of his sofa, habitual self-mutilator Terry Young leaves his bride at the airport for reasons he can’t understand. Detective Joseph Malloy’s last day on the job turns into an off-the-clock obsession with the subject of a photo his successor finds in one of his open-case files. Contractor Debbie Wendell’s dragon-lady façade shivers and shatters when she finds a handmade wooden box at an airport construction site and learns that several passersby seem to be just as fascinated with it as she is. If these beginnings sound strange, their sequels are even stranger, as Kilgore’s five heroes keep knocking up against apparently omniscient strangers, obscurely motivated killers, fellow travelers who ask them probing questions and vanish and law-enforcement officers who seem determined to lock them up for the offense of looking for Shayla Hacker—for, as her Delphic former neighbor tells Gregory, “Once you’ve seen her eyes, you won’t be able to stop looking for her.” The search takes them as far as Cairo and Rio de Janeiro before coming to rest in Three Rooks, Ind., where a surprising number of impossible questions will be answered and a much larger number will not. Twin Peaks meets The Da Vinci Code in this surpassingly weird debut.
—Kirkus Reviews

This is one of those novels that is better than its summaries make it sound. A disparate group of peoplea lonely man, a disenchanted girl, a newly married husband, a construction contractor, a retired detectiveis united by the mystery of an unknown woman, Shayla Hacker. Each of the five characters lives is touched in different ways by her, and as they each try to find out who she is, and to understand why theyre obsessed with her, they come together, realizing that what theyre really looking for is a missing part of themselves. It sounds loopy and too precious for words, but its neither (well, maybe just a little loopy). Kilgore is a persuasive writer with a stark, stripped-down style: we believe the story because he sells it to us. Balancing always on the edge of surrealism, the novel is a kind of existential thriller, an exploration of what makes a person whole, posing as a story about a bunch of people looking for a mysterious woman. Intriguing stuff.
—Booklist

This book is well worth the energy to follow the characters on their quest to find the elusive Shayla Hacker. As a mix of mystery, thriller, sci fi and adventure, Evan Kilgore seems to be creating a new genre. With the tinges of paranormal so intertwined with characters that at first appeared commonplace, it takes concentration to decide if it the characters or the reader that has lost a sense of the normal and the real. Kilgore is able to elevate the mundane thriller into a work of thoughtful activity that forces the reader to examine it from all directions. The writing maintains the pace of the story without letting the suspense fade throughout. The well worn concept of the journey into the unknown to rescue the maiden is brought into the modern age with innate talent and creativity. This is an author whose writing progress will be interesting and, probably, noteworthy.
—Front Street Reviews

Five different people - a lonely systems analyst in a large city, a 17 year small-town girl abandoned by an older brother, a groom who is a self mutilator who abandons his wife on their wedding day, a retiring police detective, and a female blue collar contractor working to renovate an airport terminal. All are connected by a single question - Who is Shayla Hacker? Thus begins a strange journey in a book I personally found fascinating. Driven by an obsession the five strangers don't fully understand they cross the country and the world, passing through each other's lives, in search of a girl and an answer. In spite of being warned off by authorities they continue until the answer is finally revealed, or is it? An unusual and very enjoyable outing.
—bookbitch.com

Evan Kilgore is a recent graduate of USC, a Washington transplant living in Los Angeles. He is currently at work on a variety of book, film, and television projects. His debut novel, Who is Shayla Hacker, a bizarre search for one girl, will be published in June of 2007.