After reading THE DEMONOLOGIST, I came away not exactly wowed by that bestselling book but interested in the author. I picked up THE ONLY CHILD, which offered a similarly intriguing premise, and came away with the same mix of likes and dislikes.

In THE ONLY CHILD, Dr. Lily Dominick, a New York forensic psychologist, deals with the worst of the worst criminals. She feels at home here, in this institution, as she’s always been estranged from other people. This is because her mother was murdered when she was a child by what may have been a monster.

When a man comes before her claiming to be the inspiration behind literary monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein, she considers him a charismatic but ultimately violently insane criminal. Then he claims to be her father. When he breaks out out of prison, Lily gives chase to learn what he has to tell her about her mother and the night of mom’s murder.

In some ways, THE ONLY CHILD is similar to THE DEMONOLOGIST. Protagonist with a dark side who can’t relate to other people is forced into a chase by a monstrous antagonist. Enter a third party that wants to capture the monster and is willing to kill her. The book seems to be constructed one chapter something happens, the next chapter Lily ruminates on it. The plotting and structure is as set up for a bestseller as you can get (think Dan Brown), though this novel did not achieve the sales THE DEMONOLOGIST enjoyed.

Pyper occasionally delivers riveting horror sequences, but for this reader the lack of a likeable protagonist diffused the tension. As with THE DEMONOLOGIST, I felt the protagonist was too emotionally distanced for me to fully engage. Lily also changes her mind frequently, makes bad decisions, and alternates between being terrified and in lust with the monster. The big reveals at the end only reinforced this for me. The monster, meanwhile, is intriguing but completely unsympathetic, being a brutal sadist.

So I liked it. It’s a good book, and Pyper should be applauded for his success, but as with THE DEMONOLOGIST, while I liked it, I didn’t love it. I just need that protagonist I can relate to and root for.

THE DEMONOLOGIST by Andrew Pyper tells the story of a professor of demonic mythology who is confronted by a very real demon that wants him to help bring demons out of the realm of story and into the real world. I liked it. Though I didn’t find it particularly frightening, it’s a very well written story. I’m on a bit of a literary horror bender right now, and I’d consider THE DEMONOLOGIST a gold standard for that subgenre.

The book reads like Michael Chabot wrote a horror novel. A witty, erudite professor lives in Manhattan, has a precocious daughter, exchanges witty banter with a professional colleague who functions as his story “ally,” and his marriage is on the rocks. When he’s hired to go to Venice to examine a phenomenon, resulting in his daughter being taken from him by a demon, he is forced to use his knowledge of demonic lore (specifically, John Milton’s PARADISE LOST) to find her. His pursuit becomes a game between him and the demon. He wants his daughter back. The demon wants something from him.

I loved the writing, enjoyed the characters, and found a number of scenes satisfyingly creepy. But I never really engaged with the story on an emotional level. The protagonist is, well, just too darn witty. He regards most of the situations he finds himself in at a safe emotional distance, such as the breakup of his marriage, and when he talks about the demon and what’s happening to him, he resorts to banter when real conversation is called for. My biggest disappointment was a failed expectation. I was hoping the novel would be about a man using his knowledge of demonology to crack a mystery. Instead, we find the character very, very loosely relating passages in PARADISE LOST to city names, that kind of thing, and pursuing the demon accordingly. This left a real opportunity on the table, which was for the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the broad spectrum of demonic lore and see the protagonist use it to solve a mystery, the way we’d see in a Dan Brown or Michael Crichton novel and what makes those books so darn entertaining.

But okay, for what I did get, I liked it. It’s an entertaining story told with a sophisticated voice, well-developed characterization, and some creepy scenes. I liked the author enough I picked up THE ONLY CHILD, his next novel.