Lost Girls [Mass Market Paperback]

Andrew Pyper (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 518 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited; First Thus edition
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006392202
• ISBN-13: 978-0006392200
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,159,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I write novels for a living, and it's the best (and now only) job I can imagine for myself. My books are usually referred to as thrillers, or "literary thrillers," or mysteries, or suspense, or even sometimes horror - though I see them as merely stories where bad things happen, and where people learn more of themselves through experiencing bad things. If those bad things are also scary and/or thrilling and/or mysterious, all the better.

My most recent novel is The Killing Circle, which is about what happens when a wannabe novelist steals another wannabe's story and the villain from that story is given life in the so-called "real world." It was selected as a Notable Crime Novel of the Year in The New York Times. Then there's The Wildfire Season, about a man who must pass through a forest fire that has encircled a remote town in order to save his ex-girlfriend and the daughter he met for the first time only days earlier. The Trade Mission has been called a "modern Heart of Darkness" and involves a pair of overnight dot-com millionaires (remember them?) brutally confronting non-virtual reality after being pursued in the Brazilian jungle. Finally (or originally) there's Lost Girls, which was a New York Times Notable Book and Globe and Mail Best Book, won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, and concerns a defence lawyer who believes he's being visited by the ghosts of two girls, the presumed victims of a double murder committed either by his client...or the Lady of Lake, a local myth who waits to pull others down into the lake outside town...

The Killing Circle, The Wildfire Season and Lost Girls are all in active development (as they say) for feature films.

I also have a law degree I've never used, and a B.A. and M.A in English Literature which have proved considerably more handy. I live in Toronto for the most part.

There's more biographical tidbits and tidbits of other sorts too at my website: www.andrewpyper.com

Hope you enjoy the books!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting Morality Play, May 19, 2000

By 

Eric L. Hoheisel (Haslett, Mi United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Girls (Hardcover)

Bart Crane is a criminal defense attorney with moral values equvialent to the average serial killer. Cocaine addicted and having an unseemly attraction to teenage girls, this character is the embodiment of a thousand lawyer jokes. He is sent to a burnt out little town in Northern Ontario to defend a man accused of killing two teenage girls. Then the atmosphere grows eerie as the bad dreams and hallucinations begin.This novel owes as much to Dicken's 'A Christmas Carol' as it does to the works of Stephen King. The lead character at first seems to be an anti-hero, but by the novels end the reader believes he has transformed into a halfway decent human being.I would recommend this horror legal thriller hybird to fans of John Grisham, Stephen King, or Ruth Rendell.Also Recommmended: 'Julian's House' by Judith Hawkes and 'Something Dangerous' by Patrick Redmond

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accurate Portrayal of Small-town N. Ontario, May 25, 2000

By 

T. Sunderland (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Girls (Hardcover)

Having lived in small-town Ontario (cottage country) for 15 years of my life, Pyper's depiction of Murdoch is bang-on, particularly the hotel (where he spends most of his time), from his description of the bar right down to the telephone ringing in the middle of the night. As he rightly puts it, every Ontario town has a Queen's Hotel or an Arlington. His accurate descriptiveness aside, Pyper's interaction with his two law partners is side-splitting in its own right and, as such, it is easy to see where our Bartholomew comes by his cynical attitudes towards both his profession, his clients and practically everyone else he comes in contact with.

The plot (sometimes) stretches, but on balance is a fine mystery and more than deserves the awards it has won in Canada. If I'm not mistaken, it's the authors first novel. A brilliant start.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good first novel from a writer with REAL promise..., June 15, 2001

By 

K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lost Girls (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm a bit disappointed in the other reader reviews I've seen here. After all, this is a FIRST novel by the author and I was amazed by the great writing in so much of this book, leaving me with a desire to read more books by Mr. Pyper, who I expect to get better and better as time goes on. To be honest, this book has some of the flaws of a first book written by an author who needs more practice tightening and sharpening his sense of pacing and drama but even so, there is much to recommend here. The first chapter, where a young girl is dragged to the bottom of a lake by an inexplicable force, is truly gripping. After that first chapter, there was some lack of tension here and there and things dragged a bit at time, but I still could NOT put this book down. There is an original voice at work here, one that deserves to be heard again and I, for one, am looking forward to reading another of this author's books in the future.