Andrew Pyper's The Demonologist Optioned for Film

Andrew Pyper's new thriller The Demonologist won't even be published until this October by Orion in the UK — we don't think the book has a US publisher yet — but in a preemptive move, Universal Studios has optioned the book for film.

The Demonologist is Pyper's sixth novel, and at least three of his other books are already in early stages of film development: his 2000 Arthur Ellis Award-winning first novel Lost Girls, his third book, The Wildfire Season, and his fourth novel The Killing Circle.

In The Demonologist, Professor David Ullman is among the world's leading authorities on Christian religion and myth. Not that he's a believer. He sees what he teaches as nothing more than entrenched fiction — the "things that go bump in the mind". That's why when he's offered a trip to Venice to be a consultant on a case study based on his expertise as a "demonologist" he accepts, seeing it as a free vacation for his teenage daughter and himself. But what he witnesses in an attic room at an address amidst the decadent splendor of the old city will change what he believes forever. Terrified, David races back to his hotel. But now he has the unshakable feeling that he is no longer alone. And that the voice that passes from his daughter's lips before she jumps from the hotel's roof belongs to a being he has long studied … but until now never thought could ever be real.

(Related article: Deadline.com.)