Prolific novelist Andrew Pyper captured readers with tales of monsters and demons

He was one of Canada’s most prolific and successful novelists, though his name never turned up on shortlists for the Governor General’s Award or Giller Prize, which certify the country’s literary titans. That was okay with Andrew Pyper; his mission was to excite and disturb his readers with his thrillers featuring murderers, monsters, child molesters, ghosts and demons. All the imaginings normally forced down into the basement of consciousness.He had graduated from McGill University with an honours BA and MA in English literature; when he wanted, he could produce serious literary fiction that drew inspiration from Alice Munro who had grown up, like him, along the shores of Ontario’s Lake Huron. His first book, the short story collection Kiss Me published in 1996, brought together 13 well-polished tales of young people in Montreal and Toronto experimenting with drugs and sex, the dangers and temptations of the big city. But after that, there was a course correction with the publication of his first crime novel, Lost Girls, set in Ontario’s cottage country. It is told in the sardonic voice of a cocaine-addicted criminal defence lawyer and features a watery ghost who may have aided in the drowning of two teenage girls by their English teacher.