Starter Villain
Charlie Fitzer is a divorced substitute teacher who just wants to open a pub and get through the day with his cat, Hera, for company. Then his estranged uncle Jake — a secretive, self-made billionaire — dies and leaves Charlie his global business empire, which turns out to be a genuine supervillain operation, complete with a hidden island lair, a fleet of henchpeople, unionized dolphins, and hyper-intelligent genetically engineered spy cats. As Charlie tries to make sense of his inheritance, a cabal of rival supervillains circles, determined to seize the empire — or kill him — before he can figure out how to run it. Going straight starts to look a lot less appealing than going bad.
A divorced substitute teacher who inherits his estranged uncle's supervillain empire.
Charlie's late uncle, a self-made billionaire whose global business turns out to be a supervillain operation he leaves to Charlie.
No. Starter Villain is a standalone novel — it does not continue an earlier Scalzi series and, as of this writing, no sequel has been announced by Tor Books.
Yes. It won the 2024 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It was also a finalist for the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Novel and a top-ten finalist for the 2024 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Hera and Persephone are Charlie's cats. Over the course of the novel they're revealed to be genetically engineered, hyper-intelligent spy cats working within his late uncle's supervillain organization.