Rating: 
Summary: Not Worth Your Time
Review: ...This is not a good book. ...Simply because its not well written, was a least 100 pages too long for the story, contained no characters about which anyone could be reasonably sympathetic and had no focus.Part courtroom drama, part ghost story, the plot of Lost Girls never really finds a focus. It shifts from a murder trial, in which the main character is the defense attorney, to ghost story to urban legend. The main character himself is sleazy, unlikable and incompetent and I gave up on finding anything redeeming about him after the first 50 pages. That said, its difficult to care what happens to him. The "lady in the lake" legend is an element that never pans out for Pyper and shouldn't have made it past the editor. It merely adds static to an already precarious plot. Overall, its obvious that this was a first novel and it makes a good case for the use of editors. Sentence fragments and passive voice abound. If the story itself was better, it would be easier to forgive these things but, alas, its not. Leave it sitting on the shelf. There are better things to read out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong debut novel--I loved it!
Review: Bartholomew Christian Crane is a lost soul of questionable lawyerly morality. His first murder trial is the case of the lost girls, two missing teenagers from Murdoch, an odd little town in northern Ontario. Barth relies on sarcasm and cocaine as he encounters strippers, a ghost and his strange client. Will he emerge from this trial unscathed? Author Pyper's background as a poet is evident from the opening paragraph of this, his debut novel. The story is liberally sprinkled with Pyper's own brand of humor, spiced with unique imagery and the authentic flavor of the north. He had me hooked from the opening scene. If you enjoy intelligent crime fiction, suspenseful fantasy or well-crafted stories, this book is a must-read. But be warned, this is not a typical court-room drama or a brain-candy upper. The story is soulful, depressing and riveting.
Rating: 
Summary: Not overly impressed
Review: I enjoyed the creepiness of it and must admit there were times I actually felt my heart pounding a bit...and I was jumpy around the house for a little while...but it still can't be classified as "horror", it isn't really satisfying as a mystery, it's more than just a story. I guess, for me, it just left a whole lot to be desired.
The main characters were very one-dimensional. In fact, ALL of the characters were one-dimensional and needed a lot of development.
I can't say I'd never read another Pyper book again but I can say I'm not rushing out to see if there are any more.
Rating:
Summary: IMPLAUSIBLE AND AMATEUR
Review: I understand that this is Pyper's first novel and therefore I'm willing to give him some slack, but I can't understand how most of this book made it by an editor. The writing itself is often good and obviously the author is clever, yet the whole book feels silly and contrived. I felt as if I were reading a high school student's work or work from a writer trying to throw too many obvious cliches in all at once, none of them believable in the least. Too many questions are left unanswered at the end. Did the author simply forget to tell us why the murderer's shirt would have blood on it if the girls were drowned? And what about the narrator plunging into the lake in the winter, diving down to the supposedly incredibly deep lake, and just happening to come up with hair strands from three different girls? Come on! First of all, nobody would survive that kind of cold for that long; secondly, I thought it was a deep lake--how could he dive down and pull up hair from the lake's bottom? We're meant to believe the three girls all ended up at exactly the same place and this guy just happened to dive down at the exact spot where they died? And what about the "Lady"? Did she pull them down as we were led to believe at the beginning of the book or not? The author simply dropped this. This book was infuriating because too many questions were left unanswered, but mainly because it was so amateur. Also, the characters were one dimensional. I hated the main character and found it hard to care about him. His sudden trasnformation at the end, all in a day it seemed, was hardly realistic. His co-workers were cliched and ridiculous characters. I got nothing from this book. It was a waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: On a par with "The Secret History"
Review: Imagine Stephen King, but with subtlety...Okay, I can't imagine that either. A better comparison is Donna Tartt's cult novel, "The Secret History." In both cases, I found the book by accident, never having heard of the author; became entirely immersed from Page One; and felt a sense of loss when it ended, like finishing the last morsel of a favorite dessert. Pyper's Lost Girls is eerie, witty, richly atmospheric, and keenly suspenseful -- though the suspense is less a result of wondering whodunnit (or whatdunnit!) than it is an eagerness to see how the answers will effect the book's protagonist. And what a protagonist. Pyper's antihero narrator is a proudly immoral, self-absorbed lawyer, whose determination to free a likely murderer is exceeded only by his concern that he might run out of cocaine. Entirely against your will, you find yourself feeling empathy for the guy and yearning for his redemption. A fabulously diverting book.
Rating:
Summary: A Labyrinthine Legal Shocker
Review: In this classical murder mystery, author Andrew Pyper tells a tale of a young cocaine addicted lawyer, Bartholomew Christian Crane, who travels to his long-forgotten hometown to defend a high school teacher accused of abducting and killing two of his female students. Being ruthless, Crane will let nothing stand in his way of getting his client off. As he starts to piece together his defense for his client, he finds himself being evoked into the town's inexplicable urban legend that is unraveling before his eyes. He begins to suspect that everything that is occurring to him is happening for a reason. Crane marvels at the thought of the two missing girls are somehow linked to the town's inglorious history and a long lost episode of his murky past. I give this book an 8.5. There were a few parts that could've been left out, but the rest was a nail-biting thriller. Pyper uses great sensory details and imagery to set you in a place you maybe haven't experienced. If you liked "The Sibyl in Her Grave," or "Drowning Ruth," then "Lost Girls" will surely tingle your spine. A psychological terror, and a labyrinthine legal shocker; from it's cryptic opening, to it's haunting ending, "Lost Girls" will take you into treacherous bewilderment.
Rating:
Summary: Overrated and boring
Review: LOST GIRLS begins with a prologue describing cousins in a canoe having sex. The canoe overturns and the girl is pulled into the depths, apparently by some monster.
The next chapter is rather confusing because, suddenly, there are two girls missing and their teacher is a suspect. We are introduced to the protagonist, attorney Bartholomew Christian Crane. Crane works for Lyle, Gederov & Associate, often referred to as Lie, Get `Em Off & Associate. It will be Crane's job to defend the teacher. Graham Lyle is, according to Crane, a raving queen. Gederov is a "second-generation Russian immigrant who has somehow retained a threatening hint of his ancestor's accent." He's also, "cruel, misogynistic, racist, flatulent, and nauseating dining company." The key word here is "misogynistic." So now we have incest and misogyny and a partner who's homosexual... "
Crane is sent to his home town of Murdock, Ontario. Crane's client doesn't seem to care if Crane gets him off or not. Crane doesn't care; all he wants to do is win, but as he begins to piece together a case, blaming someone else, of course, the bizarre legend of the place begins to pull him down. There's a story about the Lady of the Lake and suddenly the prologue begins to make sense.
If you assume the book is going to be about how Crane gets the teacher off, you'll be wrong. Crane begins a search for the Lady of the Lake, apparently an actual person, who fits in well with the misogynistic elements at the beginning.
Too much of a downer for you? Surprise, surprise. Get ready for an O'Henry twist at the end, that cloaks Crane with redemption.
Rating:
Summary: Canadian Gothic
Review: Lost Girls exists at a curious intersection of genres: a Scott Turow courtroom drama twisted about a Martin Amis comic amorality play, a Stephen King ghost story messing with a Thomas Harris psycho thriller. This conjunction of story types is mostly compelling -- to Pyper's credit there are few moments where the disparate elements collide rather than collude. Despite the solid sense of place (Canada certainly an underutilized thriller locale) and dank, gothic atmosphere, the ghost story elements are the least effective (and I'm a big fan of ghosts popping up in genres where the don't belong) because its awfully tough to credit Pyper's amoral, cokefiend, stripclubbing protagonist having such a freakout at a few odds and ends going bump in the night -- and because the book has to decelerate its cocaine-driven prose and pacing to to whip up the requisite dark and stormy lake atmosphere. So after an appallingly funny kick off the book drags a bit in the middle -- stay with it. The story takes an obvious twist I didn't see coming and stays particular and curious all the way to the end. The only caveat for genre-only readers -- despite the thriller drag Pyper's concerns are more those of Turow & Amis than King & Harris -- is a plus for everyone else.
Rating: 
Summary: Atmospheric and creepy
Review: The cover blurb intrigued me: Big city attorney Bartholomew Crane goes to tiny Murdoch to defend a murder suspect. But something is awry in small-town Canada, and weirdness abounds.
What the cover blurb doesn't mention is Barth brought some demons to Murdoch with him, including a nasty cocaine habit and terminal ennui.
Andrew Pyper gives us a fine view into Barth's disintegrating personality and his increasing obsession with the town legend. Some very nice atmospheric touches -- I could see the trees and feel the cold, smell the dank of Barth's moldering hotel room.
The Canadian locale seemed exotic to this American, and the unfamiliar setting made the plot a little more creepy.
A good story, well-written. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Is that IT?
Review: The opening chapters promised much, from the genuinely chilling prologue to the delightful introduction of Barth Crane - the junior associate of the far from reputable lawyers known cynically as "Lie and Get 'em off". My anticipation grew as Crane arrives at the vaguely unsettling location of Murdoch and meets some bizarre (and well depicted) characters. But then, by about a third of the way through, I found this book really began to drag. What revelations there were felt decidedly underwhelming. The supernatural sub-plot was very understated - almost as if it could be put down to Crane's sleep deprevation and drugs abuse. Whilst this ambiguity could have been a major advantage if handled subtly, in Pyper's hands however it merely comes over as a rather wishy-washy loss of direction. The courtroom scenes are adequately, if uninspiringly, described, and the twist, if indeed it were intended as such, is eminently guessable and left me feeling rather unfulfilled. Lost Girls falls uncomfortably between two stools. It probably has insufficient gritty authenticity to satisfy readers of legal dramas and whodunnits, and certainly contains not enough shocks and chills for devotees of the ghost/horror genre. I'm sorry I cannot be more generous about Lost Girls. The author clearly has considerable talent and often employs startling and delightful imagery, but the overall impact of the novel on me was rather akin to a wet grey mush (which perhaps was Pyper's intention?). ...
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