The Demonologist: A Novel - Hardcover

Pyper, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 145169752X ISBN 13: 9781451697520

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2013

Synopsis

Fans of The Historian won’t be able to put down this spellbinding literary horror story in which a Columbia professor must use his knowledge of demonic mythology to rescue his daughter from the Underworld.

A stolen child.

An ancient evil.

A father’s descent.

And the literary masterpiece that holds the key to his daughter’s salvation.

Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not that David is a believer—he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disappointed.

That evening, David’s wife announces she is leaving him. With his life suddenly in shambles, he impulsively whisks his beloved twelve-year-old daughter, Tess, off to Venice after all. The girl has recently been stricken by the same melancholy moods David knows so well, and he hopes to cheer her up and distract them both from the troubles at home.

But what happens in Venice will change everything.

First, in a tiny attic room at the address provided by the Thin Woman, David sees a man restrained in a chair, muttering, clearly insane . . . but could he truly be possessed? Then the man speaks clearly, in the voice of David’s dead father, repeating the last words he ever spoke to his son. Words that have left scars—and a mystery—behind.

When David rushes back to the hotel, he  discovers Tess perched on the roof’s edge, high above the waters of the Grand Canal. Before she falls, she manages to utter a final plea: Find me.

What follows is an unimaginable journey for David Ullman from skeptic to true believer. In a terrifying quest guided by symbols and riddles from the pages of Paradise Lost, David must track the demon that has captured his daughter and discover its name. If he fails, he will lose Tess forever.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, March 2013: This supernatural thriller rises above its by-the-numbers plot to deliver a mix of creepy mood and engaging musings on good and evil. It’s still a light read despite author Andrew Pyper’s literary pretensions. The movie rights have been optioned, and the staging of some of the narrative seemed based more for big-screen bang than because it made sense. The story is told by David Ullman, a renowned Miltonian scholar whose knowledge of Paradise Lost draws him into a mystery in Venice that ultimately puts him in peril. Ullman has to fight both his internal demons and possibly some very real ones to save himself, his daughter, and maybe the whole world. Original? No. But The Demonologist still provides a bit of page-turning fun with some truly scary moments that had me shivering during a late-night read. --Aaron Knopf

About the Author

Andrew Pyper is the author of The Only Child, which was an instant national bestseller in Canada. He is also the author of six previous novels, including The Demonologist, which won the International Thriller Writers award for Best Hardcover Novel and was selected for The Globe and Mail’s Best 100 Books of 2013 and Amazon’s 20 Best Books of 2013. The Killing Circle was a New York Times Best Crime Novel of the Year. Four of Pyper’s novels, including The Damned, are in active development for feature film. He lives in Toronto. Visit AndrewPyper.com or @AndrewPyper.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 145169752X
• ISBN 13: 9781451697520
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304