Rating: 
Summary: Predictable
Review: I found this book to be fairly uninteresting. It was a very quick read, but I figured out who was whom early on and then just found it to be rather dull to get through the book.
Rating: 
Summary: No No No! This is not a good book!
Review: But that is not to say there is nothing good about this book. The epilogue was simply brilliant and unfortunately the story line got worse from then on. I bought a book being told that I was going to be reading a courtroom thriller/drama with elements of the supernatural. To a small extent this is true, however "Lost Girls" is far more about the main character's cocaine addiction than a supernatural tale. Written in the first person but in an intensely irritating passive tense ("I walk across the street. Rain splashes on my face" and so on) "Lost Girls" actually becomes very slow reading the more you go on. Compared with the excellent epilogue this is a let down indeed.The rest of the time that Crane is not discussing whether to have "one line of snow or two", we are treated to the other characters in the book. Most are so stereotypically bland as to be of no interest at all. Thomas Tripp, the accused, is by far and away the most cardinal of character sinners as Pyper tries desperately to portray a horrific fiend of mental imbalance when the effect is somewhat nearer to a sad old man who has simply had enough. Then there is McConnell, the filibustering parent of one of the missing girls and Crane's associates, Pyper's caricatures rather than characterisation of one excessively camp, gay man and one excessively large, unpleasant and rude man. I doubt very much if Pyper has met the like of either. So in total we are talking about a book initially brilliant which overplods to a totally unsatisfactory ending which takes far, far too many pages to get to. And that does not even touch on the disappointment of the central supernatural legend that comes straight out of the "Blair Witch Project." No. My only advice is do not waste your money and your time.
Rating: 
Summary: "Lost Girls" is a keeper
Review: "Lost Girls" by Andrew Pyper is set in a
forgotten, dirty and desolate Canadian town,
called Murdoch, not too far from Toronto. The
book is about--everything human I can think of. A
narrative recorded by a coke addicted lawyer,
Bartholomew Crane, who is sent by his firm to
this town to defend a school teacher accused of
murdering two girls, though the bodies have not
been found. The town is as gritty and numb to
itself as Crane is to himself and the world around
him. Crane, who has a need to hide from a very
real and melancholy innocence where the eye of
the tiger of lives for him as well as many of the
other characters. The novel, the writer's first, is
about so many things, so many layers that it
denies any juggling act of specificity. Though it is
very specific in what it does, it would be like
pinning down a snow storm. Impossible. Just
observe at first, from the outside. Then step inside
and be engulfed in its beauty. It is darkly,
artistically, intelligently written in a kind of
poetry that is purely Pyper's own. To make Crane likable from the very
beginning, even though he is cynical as hell and
seemingly so smart and savvy and untouched,
(much as we, in other words), doesn't care about
truth, uses dishonesty when it suits him (much as
we in other words) and doesn't give much of a
damn particularly about those little girls, who
might still be alive, is the mark of a writer who
sees into sadness and comes up somehow with diamonds. Crane is acerbic and funny as well. He
is a marvelous observer. There is something
mirrored of him in the accused killer, Thom
Tripp, and in the legend of the Lady of the Lake,
which is a childhood horror that grows like
serpents out of that dark body of water, and has
in one respect, to do with, not where Crane's
innocence stopped, but added new accidental
dimension to itself. The book is bleak, but invigorating. If
there are the fabric threads connecting all of this together--Thom's pictures of girls from teen
magazines papering his apartment walls--for that
way they cannot leave; if Crane has to hate all
people because it is like making them and himself
vanish, to guard against "casual cruelty"; if the
cruel killing of a war refugee from Poland, in that
murky lake that is like the dark center of the
world in this place, from which she calls for
retribution, and made into a legend to disguise
reality; if Thom persuades two girls into a dream worldd that they so love, till it starts being real,
and maybe still they love it, even-- It's best not to become what one wishes,
because it may be at odds with the lies of
normalcy that make lives fit into tight carefully
drawn straight lines of roads in the
wilderness...then the pattern conceivably is about
innocence. And what a malign, raw wound it is.
What monsters hide just beneath the skin, not to
hurt, as much as to keep from hurting. Still though
there is this relentless return to what causes too
much anguish to even contemplate. To cover
innocence, with horror, because even that is easier
to take than the pure blast of its source. There is
the need to deny while pursuing so doggedly the
solvings. But, though Crane burns many pages of
his father's books in the lake house Crane never
knew existed, he is powerless to resist the siren
call. Innocence, the book says, can include
many dark deadly things--Crane's deep
melancholy love for Caroline, and her fate. The
missing girls who were trapped in witches'
dreams that becomes too real. It is Tripp's
desperate attempt to get back to his own boyhood,
such a close fit, he hopes between the school boy
one day and school teacher the next, that surely he
could make the jump back. As well as to a happy
marriage. And to his daughter. The book
absolutely pulses with energy and, by the way, is
quite terrifying. It is incredibly believable, and
heart rending. It is also about redpmption, to
come out of the coke haze. To say good-bye and
rush upward to the surface of that dark lake. The light that comes is grim, but
illuminating. It works like a great deep terrifying
ultimately refreshing dream that takes the ruined
threads, stitching them together. It names the
weavers of the tapestry are. In unexpected
revelations. It is, at center, about the ascent of
Bartholomew Crane. He is transformed from a
man in hiding to a man who can feel again. When Crane comforts a dying deer, hit by
a car apparently, there is such a warmth, such a
compassion from Crane as he feels the life
leaving the animal, as Crane comforts the animal.
With cars passing by, not stopping, just occupants
looking at the man on the side of the road,
cradling the deer's head in his lap, it seems that
innocence comes with acknowledging that living
things do move and that living things do die. And
sometimes it is our fault that they die. We have to
accept it. Ask grace for it. The most we can do is
to comfort each other. And in doing that, be of
use, be of full measure. The starkness, the somberness of the
novel, in its brave search for answers propelled
me forward, in the grip of the thing itself. There is
such integrity to the writing. Such a cleanness of
purpose. This is not just another forgettable
entertainment of murders in our hands, safe in our
homes, reading. It is entertaining, very much so,
but far more, it is makes one feel as though something truly good has been accomplished here
by a wondrous writer. It is of a piece. "Lost
Girls" can be no other than what it is. This book is
for treasuring. the end .
Rating:
Summary: Really lacking storyline
Review: I was very disappointed in this book. He just continues to go on and on about his drug addiction and the details of him doing cocaine. I got tired of the same ole' discription of the strippers. I kept reading wanting something really exciting to happen but this book really falls short.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I think the way Andrew twists the story and always leaves you hanging on his every word is fantastic!
Rating:
Summary: An Exciting New Author
Review: No this book is not perfect. I am not sure if its marketed correctly. By reading the cover, I thought the book was either a court case or a ghost story. After reading the book, I was pleased to discover this book is so much more. Overall, the book is more about a man and the investigation into his past that has made him a ruthless, cutt-throat lawyer. I'll admitt the ending does not have the pay-off of a great, climatic thriller but the journey was one of the best I have come across in a couple years. Andrew Pyper is an interesting new author. His writing is sharp, witty, humorous and compelling. If he impoves from this first book, its hard to imagine how good of a writer he will be. Treat yourself to Lost Girls.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Reading
Review: This was a surprise because nowhere did it say that it would deal with the supernatural. I thought it was a regular murder mystery. I don't know much about Canada so I was a little lost on the surroundings but it was good reading and hard to put down. It had a good twist at the end. I would read future books by this author.
Rating:
Summary: Fun read
Review: Pyper has a way with a narrator. He is as capable of writing sarcastic one-liners as he is drawing an evocative picture of a person or place. I enjoyed this book and he's an author I'll look for again.
Rating:
Summary: A moody and deeply personal legal thriller
Review: I picked up a copy of Andrew Pyper's LOST GIRLS at a yard sale, for the unbelievably low price of a dollar. The book jacket was covered with praise and accolades for Pyper's tale of murder and madness in northern Ontario, and I faintly remembered there being some buzz on the literary scene following its publication a few years ago. But I have had some bad experiences with book jacket blurbs as of late, and was cautious. So, steeled against disappointment, I plunged ahead, and was fortunate to discover that my dollar had not gone to waste. LOST GIRLS is a dark and moody thriller, a compulsive page-turner of high caliber. But for a novel that presents itself as more of a John Grisham-type foray into shallowly-drawn characters and legal machinations, LOST GIRLS is almost the opposite, a heavily character-driven story that has far more to do with acceptance of one's own past actions than it does the courtroom. LOST GIRLS is less a legal suspense story than it is a ghost story, where buried secrets threaten to overcome those unable to reconcile the past and the present. LOST GIRLS follows the first murder case of Bartholomew Crane, a criminal defense attorney with few qualms about what needs to be done to successfully defend his clients. He is summoned up to the remote northern Ontario town of Murdoch, where Thom Tripp has been charged with the murder of two young girls. The drawback is, there are no bodies with which to confirm the murders, and anything that points to his client as a killer is circumstantial at best. But despite this clearly winnable situation, Crane slowly finds himself doubting his reasons for wanting to defend Tripp. Local superstition points towards the involvement of an angry spirit in the lake, and Crane begins to have sightings of things he cannot easily explain away. Pyper has set himself a daunting task to perform, and has only added to the pressure by manufacturing his antagonist as an extremely unlikable character. Crane is an impotent, cocaine-snorting mess of a man, a man not above outright lying in the pursuit of winning a case. Any moral qualms he may have about what his clients have done pales in comparison to his almost fanatical devotion to winning. But Pyper is careful not to judge his character; very often in criminal defence work, a moral qualm can only get in the way of providing the best possible defence as required by law. Pyper understands this dichotomy, and it may be one of the reasons a reader might be displeased with the novel. It is much easier to get behind a crusading warrior for good than a determined lawyer who understands that everyone is entitled to be thought innocent until proven guilty. That is the law, and the way our society functions. Pyper appreciates the stress this can put on a person, and acknowledges that sometimes the job can be arduous. Pyper's strength in creating a story comes from his refusal to take the easy way out. Instead of cheapening the plot by having a more crowd-pleasing conclusion (i.e., evil lawyer recognizes the serious vocational error he has made, and travels back from the dark side), Pyper gives us an inner journey of self-discovery. What Crane slowly evolves into has nothing to do with a laypersons one-sided view of morality and the law, and everything to do with atoning for the sins and regrets of past exploits. Pyper's addition of a ghost story to the mix is one of his only missteps. While it does much to establish an atmosphere of dread, it never seems fully resolved. Crane's frequent forays to the lakeside become increasingly bizarre, and loaded with coincidence. It serves to fuel the plot, but it's incomplete, unfocused. And Crane and Tripp's final meeting is presented in such a way as to drain any tension from the story. It's an ending, but it feels rushed. And Crane's legal superiors, Lyle and Gederov, are caricatures of the worst sort; one-dimensional criminal lawyers who represent the most basic stereotype of the immoral lawyer. They allow Crane to see what he may become, but they don't belong in the same story, and do disservice to Pyper's obvious talents. But minor quibbles aside, LOST GIRLS is a fine, unpredictable thriller. And in that small sub-genre of novels set in northern Ontario, this surely must rank as one of the best.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, please
Review: Pyper's first outing is a slam dunk. Those reviewers who objected to the supernatural stuff didn't read very carefully. This guy's characters are so real, they breathe down your neck. The plot is absolutely original and purely wonderful. I cannot wait for his next book.
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