Alex North: THE WHISPER MAN
I bought this because it’s a Richard & Judy Book
Club selection and cover reviews compare it to Thomas Harris and Alfred
Hitch-cock. It’s good but not that good.
Newly widowed Tom Kennedy and his ten-year-old son Jake move into a creepy house in Featherbank (no indic-ation as to what
county this is), a town where a serial paedophile killer was active 15 years
ago and where a seemingly copycat abduction has just taken place. Young Jake has an
“invisible friend” who turns up both in the new home and the school
playground. She tells him about “the boy in the floor”, which turns out to be a
link to the earlier murders. The detective who caught that killer visits him in
prison for clues to the copycat abductor, a rather obvious echo of Hannibal
Lektor.
Fathers and Sons is a recurring theme. The
detective, the widowed father, the serial killer and the copycat perpetrator
all had violent abusive fathers. For me this made the story top-heavy, and the mix of first- and third-person narration is laboured. But the
writing strengthens as the
plot moves towards its (inevitable) climax. There’s a possible
movie in the offing, which will hopefully highlight the book’s spookier
elements.
