Looking at the premise of Andrew Pyper's sixth novel, The Demonologist, you could be forgiven for thinking you're about to crack open another Da Vinci Code imitator, a sensationalistic voyage of carefully placed clues, perfectly timed cliffhangers and impossible revelations. Don't fall for it. In these pages, Pyper has done something more. Though it's certainly a solid thriller with plenty of page-turning power, The Demonologist is at its heart a painfully human drama about loss, redemption and belief.

A gripping human drama with the pacing of a thriller, Andrew Pyper's latest novel is a surprisingly weighty page-turner.

David Ullman is a prestigious professor specializing in biblical literature and tales of demons, and one of the world's foremost experts on John Milton's epic poem of heaven and hell, Paradise Lost. Though religious literature is his specialty, David doesn't believe a word of it. His interest is unshakably academic, until a woman visits his office with a strange proposition. Just days later, tragedy strikes, and David finds himself battling dark forces and a ticking clock in a desperate effort to get his daughter Tess back. Along the way everything he thinks he knows about demons will be challenged, and everything he's sure of in the world will be tested.

With its dark mysteries and race against time, The Demonologist has all the trappings of a supernatural thriller, and has already been optioned for film. The "man forced to save his daughter" plot is nothing new, nor is the "skeptic encounters shattering revelations" plot, but in combining them Pyper finds something special. Though he never loses the taut quality of his tale, he allows his characters to take center stage, giving the book a remarkably intimate feeling that many other thrillers of its kind lack.

Readers of hardcore thrillers with supernatural overtones will find there's a lot of fun to be had between the covers of The Demonologist, but those in the mood for something a little meatier will be satisfied as well. This is a surprisingly weighty page-turner.

Arthur Ellis Award winner Pyper returns with the tale of Professor David Ullman, an expert in demonic literature who doesn't believe in the subject of his research. Things change when a mysterious woman invites him to witness an event in Venice and his daughter is promptly kidnapped by the Unnamed. Film interest in this one, as well as Pyper's other best sellers (e.g., The Killing Circle).

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

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. (Mar.)