Waste no prayers on Eddie O'Kane. Either he's lost his 15-year-old mind or he has somehow come back in time from his own death, years in the future. Certainly he knows more than his mundane Catholic-school life can account for: how to rob drug gangs, the best way to seduce female classmates, tricks for eluding principals or parents or cops.

Crazy or not, our boy has a fierce case of bad luck. People keep dying because of him, even when it's not his fault. Which isn't to overlook the growing degeneracy of his appetites. These New York Irish never got far from the bog. Awful things lurk in the woods at night, and it seems ever more likely that this depraved O'Kane is one of them.