Canadian author Andrew Pyper, who launched his literary career with the spellbinding thriller Lost Girls, died of complications from cancer at his home in Toronto on Jan. 3. He was 56.

That 2000 supernatural mystery/courtroom drama, about a male teacher accused of murdering two schoolgirls and the lawyer who defends him, earned Pyper a reputation for tight plot lines and deep character studies. It also won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel from the Crime Writers of Canada as well as coverage in the Globe and Mail, New York Times and Amazon.

Pyper, a Stratford, Ont., native who earned a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from McGill University, had a law degree from the University of Toronto and a successful articling stint at a top Bay Street law firm behind him when he decided to give it all up to write. 

In an essay penned for the University of Toronto Magazine in 2017, he described it as “an act of survival … the survival of my inner life. The creative self, the translator of experience, the storyteller.”

A string of bestsellers followed, including The Demonologist, The Residence and Oracle, a story about a psychic FBI agent he wrote as an audio-only book, which is being developed into a TV series by Amazon-MGM. 

His 2024 leap into cyber noir, William, came out in September, when he talked to Zoomer magazine about using the pseudonym Mason Coile to tell a story about an evil AI robot. His editor at Putnam books has confirmed they will publish another novel called Exiles under the Coile pseudonym next year, while Pyper’s obituary mentioned two Coile novels will be published posthumously. In October, Deadline magazine reported a Hollywood production company bought the rights to William for a film adaptation.

It said the author, who had been ill for the past year, died with his wife of 20 years, Heidi Rittenhouse, and children Maude and Ford, by his side. “Andrew was not done living, writing, raising his children or loving his wife but accepted his illness with tremendous courage and grace … He could not help but feel lucky for the life he had.”