The Demonologist

Starred review from January 14, 2013
A mesmerizing and melancholy narrative voice lends chilling credibility to this exceptional supernatural thriller. Milton scholar David Ullman, who teaches English literature at Columbia, believes that loneliness, each person’s going like Adam and Eve “their solitary way,” is the real theme of Paradise Lost. Outside of work, the professor has a failed marriage and a beloved 11-year-old daughter, Tess. One day, a “worryingly thin” woman with a generic European accent shows up at his campus office with an unusual offer. The woman, who says she represents a client “who demands discretion above all,” will pay Ullman a sum a third larger than his annual salary if he will travel immediately to Venice to observe a “phenomenon” that his expertise on demons qualifies him to assess. Ullman protests that he doesn’t believe in demons, but in the end, accompanied by Tess, he goes to Venice, where tragedy ensues. Pyper (Lost Girl) is especially gifted at plausibly anthropomorphizing inanimate objects to creepy effect. A standard rural mailbox is transformed into “a stooped figure, lurching after me, its mouth wide in a scream”; a book becomes “a mouth gasping for air.” Agent: Stephanie Cabot, the Gernert Company.

January 1, 2013

Renowned Columbia University professor David Ullman has focused his life's work on the hellish literary underground and inhabitants of Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. An academic to the core, he believes the demons he lectures about are simply concepts of the human mind. A marriage in tatters spurs him to accept a mysterious consulting project to Italy accompanied by his young daughter Tess. Supernatural events in Venice cause David to reconsider his position when his daughter is taken from him by the Unnamed one. Armed with his copy of Paradise Lost, his frantic quest to save Tess is both assisted and hindered by the paranormal. VERDICT In a bit of a departure from his previous suspense novels (The Killing Circle) the Canadian author, an Arthur Ellis Award winner, has written a solid literary horror thriller. Pyper gives just enough Miltonian hints to help guide his personable protagonist without inundating the reader with too much scholarly detail. Fans of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian and readers who enjoy literary thrillers with bits of Dan Brown and Stephen King mixed in will enjoy. The film version is in development with Universal Studios and director Robert Zemeckis. [See Prepub Alert, 9/24/12.]--Joy Gunn, Henderson Libs., NV

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