Andrew Pyper Widower Patrick Rush’s life has been gradually crumbling since his wife’s death. Struggling to keep his job and taking on the role of both mother and father to his young son, he joins a local writing circle and in the process slowly becomes obsessed with a horror story by one of the group, that seems to have real life connections to a serial killer who Rush begins to suspect may in fact be a member of his group. (“A New York Times Crime Novel of the Year”) About the author: Andrew Pyper was born in Stratford, Ontario, and he received a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from McGill University, and a law degree from the University of Toronto. He is the author of four novels: The Killing Circle (2008), The Wildfire Season (2005) and The Trade Mission (2002) and Lost Girls (1999) and a collection of short stories, Kiss Me. His debut novel, Lost Girls was awarded the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, and was a Globe and Mail and New York Times Notable Book. The Trade Mission was selected one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Toronto Star, and The Wildfire Season was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. Reviews Publishers Weekly - Starred Review. In this extraordinary thriller from Canadian author Pyper (The Wildfire Season), Patrick Rush, a lowly TV critic for a Toronto newspaper whose life has been slowly deteriorating since the untimely death of his wife, struggles to remain employed while trying to raise his precocious young son. When Rush decides to join a local writing circle in hopes of pursuing his lifelong dream of being an author, he becomes obsessed with a horrific work-in-progress written by a would-be writer in the group, a possibly autobiographical tale about being haunted by a terrible man who does terrible things. Rush begins finding connections among the story's supernatural villain, a shadowy serial killer with a predilection for dismemberment that has all of Toronto living in fear, and his own unraveling sanity. 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. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Booklist (August 01, 2008) - 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.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2008 Booklist Author Website: http://www.andrewpyper.com Author Interviews: Bookninja.com Thecommentary.ca Author Reading: You Tube Book Excerpt http://www.booklounge.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385663694&view=excerpt