Synopses & Reviews
From acclaimed, internationally bestselling author Andrew Pyper, a suspenseful page-turner that explores the repercussions of the most dishonest of thefts: stealing another’s story and calling it your own.When Patrick Rush, journalist, single father, and failed novelist, decides to join a creative writing circle, it seems a fertile time for the imagination. Throughout Toronto, a murderer is striking at random, leaving his victims’ bodies mutilated and dismembered, and taunting the police with cryptic notes.
Influenced by the atmosphere of menace and fear, the group begins to read each other their own dark, unsettling tales. One, Angela, tells a mesmerizing story about a childstealer called the Sandman. Patrick, though, ?nds fantasy and reality becoming blurred. Is the maniac at large in fact the Sandman? What does Angela really know? And is he himself being stalked by the killer?
It is only when his son is snatched that Patrick understands what he must do: embark on a horrifying journey into the unknown and track down the elusive ?gure known as the Sandman.
At once a complex and compulsive read, The Killing Circle explores the side effects of an increasingly fame-mad culture, where even the staid realm of literature can fall prey to ravenous ambition and competition.
"Extraordinary . . . Powered by an ingeniously nonlinear narrative and suffused with a tone thick with dread, this is easily Pyper’s most ambitious—and absorbing—work to date.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The Killing Circle is one great read: darkly lyrical and atmospheric, it’s as haunting as it is gripping. Highly recommended.” —Harlan Coben
“Very smart, very scary, very good: once I started I couldn’t stop. Fans of dark and witty suspense will love The Killing Circle.” —Peter Abrahams, author of Oblivion
Review
If Andrew Pyper scripted our collective nightmares, we'd all be dreaming and screaming like the narrator of his gorgeously written and thoroughly unnerving suspense thriller, THE KILLING CIRCLE. Your heart goes out to Patrick Rush, a grieving young widower, anxious father and dispirited television critic ("The Couch Potato") for a Toronto daily, who joins a writing workshop to thaw his frozen feelings - only to realize he has no story to tell. The same can't be said of fellow scribblers like creepy Ivan, the subway conductor who writes Kafkaesque fantasies about a sewer rat, or girlish Angela, whose morbid horror story about "a terrible man who does terrible things" not only reflects the activities of a real-life serial killer but seems to be directing his attacks on members of their own circle - if he isn't already a member of it. Taken as either a classy ghost story or the chronicle of one man's mental breakdown, this is a terrific yarn. But in examining the universal need to define one's self through narrative, it also explores the darker side of storytelling. In this context, it's worth remembering that, at least in theory, "the teller never dies in his own tale."
Review
Patrick Rush is a lonely widower, a wannabe novelist, and the father of a young son. He joins a writer's workshop or, as its leader refers to it, a "circle." The leader is a minor novelist from the seventies who disappeared from the Toronto literary scene after some scathing reviews and allegations of criminal sexual behavior. During the circle's weekly meetings, Patrick is mesmerized by the writing of a young girl whose unadorned yet ethereal prose reveals an intensely personal childhood story of abandonment, abuse, and stalking by the Sandman, a character who may be real, may be symbolic, and may have followed her to Toronto. Bodies are turning up in Patrick's neighborhood, and Patrick's concern for the safety of his son grows, even as the readings in the circle-and the behavior of its leader-become more ominous. Pyper's first novel, Lost Girls (2000), was a New York Times Notable Book. Few are better at conveying an omnipresent sense of dread and horror bubbling just beneath life's seemingly mundane routines. This will keep you up one night reading and another four checking the locks on the doors.
Review
"If Pyper scripted our collective nightmares, we'd all be dreaming and screaming. . . . Gorgeously written and thoroughly unnerving."--The New York Times Book Review "Darkly lyrical and atmospheric, it’s as haunting as it is gripping. Highly recommended."--Harlan Coben
"A terrific tale that is part ghost story and part magical realism . . . head and shoulders above most thrillers out there now."--Richmond Times-Dispatch
"Extraordinary . . . Powered by an ingeniously nonlinear narrative and suffused with a tone thick with dread."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Pyper is a true prose-master. . . . An uncozy, fright-filled thriller."--The Globe and Mail (Toron
Synopsis
A newspaper critic joins a local writing circle only to discover that a fellow classmate may be involved in a series of murders.
Synopsis
From acclaimed, internationally bestselling author Andrew Pyper, a suspenseful page-turner that explores the repercussions of the most dishonest of thefts: stealing another's story and calling it your own.When Patrick Rush, journalist, single father, and failed novelist, decides to join a creative writing circle, it seems a fertile time for the imagination. Throughout Toronto, a murderer is striking at random, leaving his victims' bodies mutilated and dismembered, and taunting the police with cryptic notes.
Influenced by the atmosphere of menace and fear, the group begins to read each other their own dark, unsettling tales. One, Angela, tells a mesmerizing story about a childstealer called the Sandman. Patrick, though, ?nds fantasy and reality becoming blurred. Is the maniac at large in fact the Sandman? What does Angela really know? And is he himself being stalked by the killer?
It is only when his son is snatched that Patrick understands what he must do: embark on a horrifying journey into the unknown and track down the elusive ?gure known as the Sandman.
At once a complex and compulsive read, The Killing Circle explores the side effects of an increasingly fame-mad culture, where even the staid realm of literature can fall prey to ravenous ambition and competition.
Extraordinary . . . Powered by an ingeniously nonlinear narrative and suffused with a tone thick with dread, this is easily Pyper's most ambitious--and absorbing--work to date. --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The Killing Circle is one great read: darkly lyrical and atmospheric, it's as haunting as it is gripping. Highly recommended. --Harlan Coben
Very smart, very scary, very good: once I started I couldn't stop. Fans of dark and witty suspense will love The Killing Circle, --Peter Abrahams, author of Oblivion
Synopsis
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE CRIME BOOK
Patrick Rush is a single father, unhappy with his career, devoted to his young son but haunted by the loss of his wife, when he joins a local writing group. In the candlelit studio where the circle meets, he finds one writer's work far more powerful than the others--a young woman named Angela, who writes about a girl stalked by a killer named the Sandman. But Angela's stories may be more autobiography than tall tale: soon the members of the group are being hunted by a shadowy figure resembling the Sandman, and the line between fiction and real life beings to dissolve. When his own son is taken, Patrick is forced to chase down the Sandman for himself and to discover the ending to his own terrifying story.
About the Author
Andrew Pyper is the author of the novels Lost Girls (which was a New York Times and Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year), The Killing Circle, and The Trade Mission: A Novel of Psychological Terror, as well as Kiss Me, a collection of stories. He lives in Toronto, and his Web site is www.andrewpyper.com.