Lost Girls - Andrew Pyper

Bartholomew Crane goes to a small town in northern Ontario to defend a man accused of the murder of two teenage girls. He assumes that it will be an easy case, since the evidence is thin and there are no bodies, but as the case begins, supernatural events occur and Barth finds himself becoming increasingly unnerved. The first thing to say about ‘Lost Girls’ is that it is a weird book. It is a mix of a ghost story and a courtroom drama and Pyper mixes the two genres quite well. His main character of Barth is also an interesting creation, as at the beginning, he seems to be an unlikeable character, but as the novel progresses, the reader likes him ...

From the reviews I had read about this book, and from the summary on the back, I thought that I was going to be scared witless, or at least get some shudders down my spine. Neither of these things happened. I think there is no doubt that Pyper has written the book very well, and it is very easy to get into. But I couldn't help but expect a bit more from the story, I hoped for some twists in the book....and there were to be fair, but I found them quite predictable. The story is about a lawyer who has to defend a school teacher who is accused of murdering 2 school girls. The bodies have never been found, and what looks to be a simple case soon gets ...

A first class chiller, this novel, but maybe it doesn’t quite live up to the quotes from reviews pasted all over, at every opportunity. I quite understand why the publishers decided this would be a good thing – Lost Girls is Andrew Pyper’s first novel, and a hugely enjoyable and unusually accomplished one it is, too… However (hands up, those who were expecting a ‘however’) the reviewers’ quotes are just a little misleading, rather than untrue, so we shall tip our metaphorical hats to them, and congratulate them on having sold this reviewer a copy, at the very least. You see the way the quotes would have you ...