Category: Review

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The Guardians in the Mail on Sunday

With the paperback publication of The Guardians set for September 13 in Canada and the US, and with the UK paperback due early in the new year, I’m presently enjoying the my-work-here-is-done process of viewing, tweaking, and signing off on new cover art and text for the reprint editions.  There are haunting new images for both the North American and British covers.  And there are also some reviews that have come to my attention that I missed the first time around.  One of them boosted my spirits enough (and I needed the boosting, as I’m getting deeper into the uncharted waters of my new novel) that I felt I would indulge myself in blurbing it here.  It appeared in the UK’s Mail on Sunday.

“Pyper is the most striking Canadian crime writer to emerge in recent years and The Guardians is a characteristically intelligent move into Stephen King territory.”                    – Mail on Sunday

Once the glow of reading this wore off (and the glow wears off too damn fast for my liking – reality has a way of roughly pushing self-congratulation aside) it provoked a thought.  Will there ever come a time when some other writer will be said to make a move into “Andrew Pyper territory”?  And if they do, should I point a shotgun in their direction and tell them to get off my lawn, or invite them in for drinks?  (I strongly suspect it will be the latter, just so you don’t get too worried…)

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The Guardians a review virgin no more

I’m not going to write a post every time a review for the new novel comes out, I promise.  But I was just sent the first major newspaper review for The Guardians at the National Post.  I’m relieved to say it’s a really great review.  Doubly gratifying because it’s so well-written and (even more rare in reviews) so well structured.  So the first question of my day is:  How early can I open something bubbly and boozy (even if it’s a bottle of Keith’s)?

Check it out here:  http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/01/07/book-review-the-guardians-by-andrew-pyper/

But what I really want to say is that today is the day that my novel is officially no longer mine.  It’s yours.  The wide and anonymous world’s.  For years the story of my fictional childhood friends and the not-so-empty Thurman house has nested in my head, been batted around in outline and on the page.  It’s been a private matter, in other words.  And now I wake up to find that it’s left the house in the night, leaving no note behind, and without a goodbye.

I’m happy, don’t get me wrong.  And I knew this day would come.  But you’d think, after five novels, you’d get used to it when the little punk grows up.  As far as I can tell, you never do.