Starter Villain

Now a New York Times bestseller!
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.
OTHER TOR BOOKS BY JOHN SCALZI
Agent to the Stars
The Android’s Dream
Fuzzy Nation
Redshirts
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded:
A Decade of Whatever, 1998–2008
The Kaiju Preservation Society
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
Monsters of Ohio
THE OLD MAN’S WAR NOVELS
Old Man’s War
The Ghost Brigades
The Last Colony
Zoë’s Tale
The Human Division
The End of All Things
The Shattering Peace
THE LOCK IN SERIES
Lock In
Head On
Unlocked
THE INTERDEPENDENCY SEQUENCE
The Collapsing Empire
The Consuming Fire
The Last Emperox
EDITED BY JOHN SCALZI
Metatropolis
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Community Reviews
This was an enjoyable book. A spoof on villain stories. Really enjoyable. My only complaint was I wish there was more cat action.
If there is only one book you read, it needs to be this one. I laughed and I gasped and I laughed some more.
4.25 stars - I adored this book, even more than I thought I would, and highly recommend it for those in search of a short, fun read.
W
Witty, light-hearted and sarcastic. I never would have read this on my own but so glad I did.
Laugh out loud funny - think Douglas Adams meets Ian Fleming. Cats are running Intelligence Services and the dolphins are taking industrial action. Short and lashings of fun.
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