A New York Times Crime Novel of the Year

A spine-chilling, mind-twisting psychological thriller - Andrew Pyper’s most gripping novel yet - in which a writing circle is haunted by a serial killer.

When Patrick Rush, journalist, single father and failed novelist, decides to join a creative writing circle, it seems a fertile time for the imagination. In the city of Toronto, a murderer is striking at random, leaving his victims’ bodies mutilated and dismembered, and taunting the police with cryptic notes.

Influenced by the atmosphere of menace and fear, the group begins to read each other their own dark, unsettling tales. One, Angela, tells a mesmerizing story about a child-stealer called the Sandman. Patrick, though, finds fantasy and reality becoming blurred. Is the maniac at large in fact the Sandman? What does Angela really know? And is he himself being stalked by the killer?

It is only when his own son is snatched that Patrick understands what he must do: embark on a horrifying journey into the unknown and track down the elusive figure known as the Sandman.