The Guardians

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From acclaimed author Andrew Pyper, a gripping novel of psychological suspense about four men haunted by a secret from childhood.

There's no such thing as an empty house...

Trevor, Randy, Ben and Carl grew up together in the small town of Grimshaw as many boys do--playing hockey on the local team, the Guardians, and forging friendships that run deep. Twenty-four years later, Trevor, recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and faced with his own mortality, learns that his old friend Ben has committed suicide. He returns to Grimshaw to pay his respects and to reunite with Randy and Carl.
 
But going home means going back to the memories of a sinister crime that occurred in the abandoned house at 321 Caledonia Street--a crime that claws its way into the present, leaving its indelible mark on everyone. Chilling to the core and gripping in the extreme, The Guardians is taut psychological suspense that will leave you at once breathless and moved.


From the Hardcover edition.

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The Killing Circle: A Novel

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The Wildfire Season: A Novel

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Lost Girls

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Attorney Bartholomew Crane doesn't belong in the small town of Murdoch. And the town of Murdoch doesn't want him there. Even Crane's client, a teacher accused of killing two girls, his own students, doesn't seem to care if Crane gets him off or not. But Bartholomew Crane has come to Murdoch to try his first murder case -- and he intends to win at all costs.

That is, until the case takes an unexpected turn. For as Crane begins to piece together a defense for his client, he finds himself being drawn into a bizarre legend at the heart of the town's history -- a legend that is slowly coming alive before his eyes.

Unnerved by visions he sees on Murdoch's dark streets, by the ringing of a telephone down the deserted hallway of his hotel, Crane is beginning to suspect that what is happening to him is happening for a reason. And that the two lost girls of Murdoch may be intricately tied to the town's shameful history ... and to a dark episode in his own long-forgotten past.

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Bartholomew Crane's first homicide trial ought to be an easy win for the young, arrogant Toronto attorney. The bodies of two missing teenagers--the Lost Girls--have never been found, and there's slight forensic evidence to tie the chief suspect, a high school English teacher, to their disappearance. Dispatched to the Canadian north woods to defend Thomas Tripp against a murder charge, Crane packs his omnipresent flask of cocaine and begins preparing to demolish the Crown's flimsy, highly circumstantial case. Crane doesn't care whether Tripp is guilty; his only job is to get him off. But Crane's client won't cooperate in his own defense, and the citizens of the small, depressed town are clamoring for his conviction.

Within days, Crane's waking and sleeping hours are haunted by odd occurrences: the disturbing apparitions of a madwoman who drowned in the same mist-shrouded lake where Tripp is assumed to have disposed of his victims; the incessant ringing of a telephone down the empty hallway of his motel; the bizarre tale of a 100-year-old murder told by an elderly woman whose own daughter was claimed by the legendary Lady of Lake St. Christopher. In short order, the facts and surmises of the case become intertwined with Crane's visions and nightmares, and what had seemed like a straightforward, easily defended case based on wrongful accusation becomes a morality play in which the protagonist himself must answer for events that occurred 20 years ago.

A brooding, moody novel as dark as its setting, Lost Girls is less a courtroom drama than a ghost story hinged on a thin plot. Crane is not a particularly likable or sympathetic character, and Pyper's attempts at creating atmosphere favor the "It was a dark and stormy night" school of genre writing. But fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and John Saul will find this a chilly enough read to occupy just that kind of evening. --Jane Adams

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The Trade Mission: A Novel of Psychological Terror

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On the heels of his acclaimed bestselling debut Lost Girls, Andrew Pyper brings his darkly musical language, chilling suspense, and psychological complexity to a story of survival in the Amazon jungle.

On the delirious eve of the new millennium, Marcus Wallace and Jonathon Bates, two twenty-four-year-old overnight dot-com millionaires, are on a trade mission in Brazil. Their product is Hypothesys, a virtual "morality machine" that promises to help people "make the best decisions of their lives." But when the decision is made to take an ecotour up the Río Negro deep into the Amazon jungle, the Hypothesys team members are forced to make choices for themselves -- choices that carry fatal consequences.

In the dead of night, their boat is boarded by paramilitaries who kill the Brazilian crew and kidnap Wallace and Bates, their two older colleagues, and their enigmatic interpreter, Crossman. Blindfolded and thrown into a pit for a prison, they must fight to find the will to survive. But when the increasingly unstable Wallace engineers a violent escape, their own natures emerge as a threat potentially more dangerous than the boundless jungle that surrounds them, or the gunmen who relentlessly pursue them.

A rare combination of literary skill, contemporary insight, and outstanding storytelling, The Trade Mission is an electrifying read that confirms Andrew Pyper's mastery of psychological suspense.

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lost girls

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