The Only Child by Andrew Pyper

Published: May 23rd 2017 by Simon & Schuster

The #1 internationally bestselling author of The Demonologist radically reimagines the origins of gothic literature’s founding masterpieces—Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula—in a contemporary novel driven by relentless suspense and surprising emotion. This is the story of a man who may be the world’s one real-life monster, and the only woman who has a chance of finding him.

As a forensic psychiatrist at New York’s leading institution of its kind, Dr. Lily Dominick has evaluated the mental states of some of the country’s most dangerous psychotics. But the strangely compelling client she interviewed today—a man with no name, accused of the most twisted crime—struck her as somehow different from the others, despite the two impossible claims he made.

First, that he is more than two hundred years old and personally inspired Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Bram Stoker in creating the three novels of the nineteenth century that define the monstrous in the modern imagination. Second, that he’s Lily’s father. To discover the truth—behind her client, her mother’s death, herself—Dr. Dominick must embark on a journey that will threaten her career, her sanity, and ultimately her life.

Fusing the page-turning tension of a first-rate thriller with a provocative take on where thrillers come from, The Only Child will keep you up until its last unforgettable revelation.

Pyper NEVER disappoints. Each time I finish one of his works, I think, wow, nothing will ever top this- then the next release does. Pyper has a way of crafting worlds. The settings jump off the pages and scurry into the readers surroundings. No longer am I in a quiet world reading, I am transported right into the action of his stories. From Alaska, to dismal psychiatry hospitals, there is never a dull moment.

I have mixed feelings about our protagonist. At times I am rooting for her, at other times I want to shake sense into her. She is deeply flawed, which adds to her allure and intrigue. If the character leading the journey had been a cookie-cutter of society’s view of perfection, the story would not have been as captivating.

Pyper has such haunting descriptions. Delicate, dark and even beautiful at times. His signature style of prose is peppered with gorgeous, gothic language. Imagine if Pyper were able to team up with the great, late Radcliffe?

Gothic horror is a tricky style that not many authors truly ‘get’. Pyper has revamped the classic genre and brought new vitality to the fundamentals of terror.

Amazing read. So PROUD that Andrew Pyper is a fellow Canadian. Go, CanLit!