After reading Andrew Pyper’s The Killing Circle, I was anxious to read something else from him. Unfortunately, I decided on The Guardians, which I am sure (hoping) is simply not his best work. The story focuses on a character who finds himself dealing with a recent diagnosis of Parkinsons, when he learns that one of his old dear friends has committed suicide. This forces him to return to the small town of Grimshaw, where he grew up and essentially ran away from. While there the main character has to re-live a dangerous past and face a secret, which includes a haunted house. While Pyper’s writing is graceful and intriguing, the story itself is full of plot wholes and simply uninteresting. Admittedly, I am not typically a fan of ghost stories, which may explain my dismay to this novel. However, I felt the story was simply a regurgitation of other spook novels and carried little insight into anything. This is a far cry from The killing Circle, which was a genuinely creepy read. I will try another Pyper novel, because I do think his writing style is enjoyable. I just cannot recommend this disappointing and boring read.

I enjoyed THE GUARDIANS on multiple levels. First, the novel is set in small-town Ontario, and is about three forty-something men, all ex-players of the hometown hockey team "The Guardians" who come together after the death of a dear friend they haven't seen in years. Having grown up in a small town in Northern Ontario (and one in which hockey was central - three NHL players were born out of Levack, Ontario when I was growing up, one of whom I played alongside in my youth) I recognize how perfectly Pyper has nailed this element of the novel. The town itself is like a character I can quickly and easily relate to. Pyper describes characters, settings and situations in a small town so perfectly that I, had I not actually been back in my small home town when I was reading it, his novel would have propelled me there. He also beautifully nails the relationship between men, the unspoken thoughts, the carefully script of "maleness" that dominates and ties the four friends together through a critically important secret all four of them have sworn themselves to which involves the Thurman house, an old, abandoned house that stands across from the bedroom of Ben, one of the friends. Of course, the secret is what brings the three surviving friends together when Ben, the one who stayed behind, to continue to watch the house, to be the remaining guardian of its evil secrets, takes his own life. THE GUARDIANS wonderfully parallels Stephen King's IT in this manner of a single friend staying behind to keep an eye on the evil that dwells in their small home town. And like the King novel, which is one of my favourites, Pyper's novel jumps back and forth between the present, where the friends come together on their old stomping grounds, and the past, where the secrets the four friends have all kept are slowly unravelled and revealed to the reader. The main character and narrator, Trevor, who was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease is perhaps the walking, living and breathing parallel to The Thurman House, the creepy "haunted house" that is central to the story's plots and secrets. Choosing a life of shallow rewards and relationships, he is ultimately alone and soliatary, just like the house that has stood abandoned and neglected for so many years. Trevor also represents much of the speculation many people have of moments lost, decisions made in haste and wondering what "might have been" had he done things just a little differently. Pyper unravels the tale with a masterful tightening of tension, one in which the shadows begin to creep, ever so slowly across the ground, making you do a double take to wonder if what you just thought you saw was really there. He also addresses the "don't go into that haunted house" element wonderfully so that each time the boys and men enter the house, you partially wonder why they would do so, but can empathize with what draws them forward. To sum up my review, this novel keeps me in awe of Pyper's storytelling skills, his Norman Rockwell-like capturing of small-town Ontario, and his masterful tightening of suspense.