Blackbird

Fiegel combines engaging sociopathy with a bit of the anarchist bent seen in the television show Mr. Robot in his electrifying debut. “I believe in neither free will nor predetermination. I believe in condiments.” Meet Christian, an eight-year-old girl kidnapped by assassin Edison North in a fast-food restaurant. Though he’s a killer for hire, he has standards, and he raises Xtian (as he rechristens her) as his apprentice—forbidding her, for instance, from playing role-playing games online because the players curse too much. North’s teaching provides Xtian with brutal lessons in survival and how to kill with cunning, but other people in North’s amorphous organization don’t appreciate his bringing her into their business. Mentor and apprentice narrate Fiegel’s black comedy, which turns deadlier and less comedic as Xtian grows from child to partner to caretaker in the decade between her kidnapping in 2008 and 2018, when the denouement occurs. Readers will want to stick around and see how the characters respond to peril and betrayal. Despite a slack ending, Fiegel’s debut is satisfying and original. (Nov.)