Status
Available
Genres
Collection
Publication
Dell Books (2001), Edition: 1st, 452 pages
Description
When hotshot lawyer Bartholomew Crane is despatched to a lakeside town in northern Ontario with a brief to defend a schoolteacher accused of murdering two teenaged girls, he assumes it will be an open-and-shut case.
User reviews
LibraryThing member ShelfMonkey
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
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member Bookmarque
It took me a long time to get through this book even though it isn’t very long. I stalled because of a couple of things, I think. The synopsis above makes me want to read of long-lost secrets that are covertly tied to the present day. I also am a child of the 20th century and want more action and
That’s when he starts really acting out of character. He’s a cocaine addicted, cutthroat criminal defense lawyer with the morals of a mob hit man. Strangely enough, he has no sex drive. Sure, he frequents strip clubs, but not out of any lust for women. Merely because he finds it interesting and diverting and he somehow feels it is in character for him to go to these places. He hasn’t had sex in years and admits to the fact that he’s so uninterested that he can’t get an erection. It’s because of the incident in his past.
That episode is the first chapter in the book. An anonymous scene between two cousins out canoeing on a lake to escape their somewhat drunk and overtly sexual parents. He wants to take their fooling around to the next level and she suddenly panics and then stands up in the canoe. She goes overboard and he tries to save her but she is pulled down into the depths of the lake by unseen forces.
He is quietly but unprovably blamed for the death and then on the way back from an interview at the police station; his parents are killed in a car accident that left him with only bruises. He puts it out of his mind, but when he hears of the Lady of the Lake, and does research on her, he knows that it was she who pulled his cousin to her death. The Lady also had a hand in killing the two girls the teacher is accused of killing. Thom fell under the spell of the Lady and brings the two girls to the lake on the pretense of seeing if she really exists and trying to get in touch with her. He drowns them at the behest of the Lady.
The Lady is some unnamed WW2 immigrant woman who ends up in Murdoch with two children. She speaks no English and has few skills. Somehow, she ends up being the town pump and then goes mental. She is dragged off to the nut house and routinely sterilized. The kids end up god knows where. She escapes the nut house and ends up drowning herself in the Lake.
In the end, Barth is dismissed from the case before he can get the teacher to plead guilty. The case is thrown out and the teacher goes free. Barth, still in the grip of some madness, goes to the lake and swims out over his head. Someone is swimming out after him. It’s his former client. The teacher sacrifices himself to the Lady and Barth tries to do the same but is rejected by her. He ends up quitting his law firm and that’s the last we see of him.
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drama in my fiction. This book was very subtle – like Dracula or Frankenstein is subtle. Emotions play center stage and the paranormal doesn’t have to hit its victims over the head, it just has to play quietly in the corner and wait to be noticed. Also, the author did something I hate – or rather, whoever wrote the synopsis did it. They mention the woman from the seedy strip club and give her significance above and beyond what she actually has in the story. She makes a couple of late night phone calls to Barth, and that somehow unnerves him enough to then start seeing visions of young girls in old-fashioned calico dresses (twice only) in the streets of Murdoch. That’s when he starts really acting out of character. He’s a cocaine addicted, cutthroat criminal defense lawyer with the morals of a mob hit man. Strangely enough, he has no sex drive. Sure, he frequents strip clubs, but not out of any lust for women. Merely because he finds it interesting and diverting and he somehow feels it is in character for him to go to these places. He hasn’t had sex in years and admits to the fact that he’s so uninterested that he can’t get an erection. It’s because of the incident in his past.
That episode is the first chapter in the book. An anonymous scene between two cousins out canoeing on a lake to escape their somewhat drunk and overtly sexual parents. He wants to take their fooling around to the next level and she suddenly panics and then stands up in the canoe. She goes overboard and he tries to save her but she is pulled down into the depths of the lake by unseen forces.
He is quietly but unprovably blamed for the death and then on the way back from an interview at the police station; his parents are killed in a car accident that left him with only bruises. He puts it out of his mind, but when he hears of the Lady of the Lake, and does research on her, he knows that it was she who pulled his cousin to her death. The Lady also had a hand in killing the two girls the teacher is accused of killing. Thom fell under the spell of the Lady and brings the two girls to the lake on the pretense of seeing if she really exists and trying to get in touch with her. He drowns them at the behest of the Lady.
The Lady is some unnamed WW2 immigrant woman who ends up in Murdoch with two children. She speaks no English and has few skills. Somehow, she ends up being the town pump and then goes mental. She is dragged off to the nut house and routinely sterilized. The kids end up god knows where. She escapes the nut house and ends up drowning herself in the Lake.
In the end, Barth is dismissed from the case before he can get the teacher to plead guilty. The case is thrown out and the teacher goes free. Barth, still in the grip of some madness, goes to the lake and swims out over his head. Someone is swimming out after him. It’s his former client. The teacher sacrifices himself to the Lady and Barth tries to do the same but is rejected by her. He ends up quitting his law firm and that’s the last we see of him.
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LibraryThing member Cecilturtle
This is a carefully crafted tale that goes from normal to creepy to hair raising. The characters and - what's really fabulous the decor - take a life their own and really suck you in the story.
LibraryThing member kaylol
Can't say I liked it and it could have been better but it's ok.
LibraryThing member ChristineEllei
I picked this up at the library because of a recommendation. This book is a murder mystery, a legal thriller and a ghost story. Toronto lawyer Bartholomew Crane drives to Northern Ontario to defend an English teacher accused of murdering two female students. The local legend of “the Lady” seems
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like a convenient place to rest the guilt and get his client acquitted. But of course things are never that easy. I found this to be a well written, compelling book, but compelling for all the wrong reasons. It has a protagonist that I did not like, an antagonist I felt sympathy for and a small town inhabited by people, with the exception of one, that I was grateful not to have as neighbours. Two thirds of the way through the book I sensed the story was going to resolve itself in one of two possible ways (it did) and as a reader I often find that disappointing. In this case however it was so well done that although I kind of saw it coming it still caught me by surprise. If that makes no sense then you’ll have to read the book and find out for yourself. Show Less
LibraryThing member jjaylynny
Less a tale of suspense and more a portrait of a man with a crumbling psyche thanks to secrets in his past. An atmospheric story about small towns, the lies we tell ourselves and each other.
Subjects
Awards
Crime Writers' Association Awards (Shortlist — 2000)
Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence (Shortlist — First Novel — 2000)
Shamus Award (Shortlist — 2001)
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
452 p.; 4.18 inches
ISBN
0440235464 / 9780440235460