Not yet thirty, Bathory, or 'Bat' to those near to her, has assembled a peculiar CV: Model, sex worker, linguist, Latin scholar. Nothing in her lively job history employs the skill set she inherited from her strange family, chief among them an uncanny ability to sidestep seemingly certain death(s). Her clan are assassins, albeit of a romantic bent.

As a child, Bat’s lonely games would mimicked spycraft and wetwork, while her parents issued theories on love and death. As an adult, she is set on swerving any enduring romantic loves, which entails managing to avoid that one alluring figure from her father’s past. She is equally intent on dying young, a notably less difficult thing to avoid with her heritage. But when the past inevitably resurfaces, Bat’s twin devotions to death and detachment are compromised.

LaCava’s new novel is a thriller, examining violence through its subversion; and a love story about the impossibility of denying (the magic of) human connection.