The Only Child by Andrew Pyper

Published by Simon & Schuster on May 23, 2017

The Only Child is a horror novel, but it’s not the horror novel I expected. Is it a vampire novel? Not really, because the vampire genre has devolved into a branch of romance fiction thanks to Twilight and its trashy imposters. There’s only a bit of romantic blood lust in The Only Child, although the protagonist, a fellow named Michael, once wooed Mary Shelley.

Michael is a monster, a blend of Dracula and Frankenstein and Mr. Hyde, who has a taste for blood and nineteenth century horror writers. Give Andrew Pyper credit for drawing on the classics for inspiration.

Michael says he was created to be the prototype of a perfect soldier. Those plans never turn out quite as the mad scientist expects. But whether Michael is telling the truth about his origins is not entirely clear.

What is clear, perhaps, is that Lily Dominick is his daughter. And that Lily’s mother was torn apart by a bear when Lily was six. Except it might not have been a bear. And while Lily’s memories of that day might not be entirely reliable (did she really ride away from the crime scene on a white horse?), it doesn’t take much to convince her that she is a monster’s daughter.

Lily is now a forensic psychiatrist who assesses the mental health of individuals who, more often than not, have committed horrible crimes. The story begins with a man who tore the ears off a stranger so that he would be evaluated by Lily. At least, that’s what he tells her. The man is Michael, who claims to be over two hundred years old.

Michael manipulates Lily in ways that lead her to Eastern Europe and a variety of threatening encounters. Lily wants to learn the truth about the man, about her mother, and perhaps about herself, but separating truth from deception is difficult. The eventual question for Lily is whether she should make an alliance with Michael or with the people who are trying to kill him. It’s a tough question.

Pyper is an excellent storyteller and The Only Child is a truly creepy work of fiction. The plot moves in unexpected directions and the characters are so enigmatic that it’s impossible to decide who to like or dislike until the very end. In fact, the ending redefines the reader’s view of key characters. The Only Child is a well-crafted, surprising novel that plays with the traditions of horror fiction and manages to add something new.

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The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper

Published by Simon & Schuster on March 5, 2013

Does the world really need another novel about demons and the Vatican? I'm not a big fan of books in which Satan is a character. I am, however, a fan of Andrew Pyper. I loved The Wildfire Season, a thriller with sharply drawn characters that has nothing to do with the supernatural. Based on my admiration of that book, I decided to give The Demonologist a try. It turned out to be a good decision. Yes, the plot involves a demon, but this is fundamentally a book about flawed mortals.

In the novel's first thirty pages, Pyper gives more life to his protagonist than most authors can manage in three hundred. David Ullman is a faculty member in the English Department at Columbia, specializing in mythology and religious narrative with a particular expertise in Milton's Paradise Lost. Ullman suffers from depression, which may be why his wife is openly having an affair with a physics professor. Ullman wants his floundering marriage to work and does his best to be a good husband to Diane, although, like many men, he can't remedy her complaint that he is rarely "present in the moment." His platonic friend, Elaine O'Brien, is Ullman's "clear-thinking inner self" but she has been diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer. His eleven-year-old daughter, Tess, alienated from both her parents, seems to share his melancholy. David is alone in the world. But does he need to be?

A mysterious woman appears in Ullman's office on behalf of an employer that wants a demonologist to investigate a phenomenon she refuses to describe. The next day David and Tess are off to Venice. What he encounters there rocks the foundations of his belief system. As much as he would like to ignore it, he can't. He is given a task -- to "find and retrieve the dead ... from darkest limbo" -- that his life, and his daughter's, will hinge upon. Whether David will survive may depend upon whether he is "vulnerable to becoming convinced of impossibilities."

Throughout the novel, David is manipulated by unseen forces. He's being chased, but is his pursuer working for the Devil or the church? Or, as O'Brien sees it, has David created his own mythology, a delusional reaction to grief? While The Demonologist has the action and the pace of a thriller, this is also the story of a man reinventing himself. David takes a road trip to North Dakota ("a version of hell in itself") and then south and back north, a journey that advances the plot while giving David time for introspection. It is a journey of self-discovery that forces David to confront the part of himself that refuses to engage with the world. To battle the Devil, David must open his mind to horror. He must remember the past while learning how to think and feel at the same time. He must understand the death of his brother and confront his feelings about his father. The Demonologist is ultimately the story of a very personal hell.

Pyper has mastered the art of building fully shaped characters into plot-driven stories. Not just in its horrific subject matter, but in the intensity of its prose, the realism of its supernatural elements, and the intelligence of the story, Pyper has crafted a chilling tale of good and evil. The Demonologist reminded me of Joe Lansdale at his best. It is a book that will appeal not just to fans of horror, but to all readers who appreciate a thought-provoking story told with literary style.

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