The Killing Circle

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

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.