Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsWhisper Man Not For Everyone
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2019
Spoiler Free. The Whisper Man would qualify as a either a thriller, a mystery/procedural or a family drama but is perhaps a strong example of none of these. It never quite made up its mind as to what it wanted to be. The overall story seems to be about a young boy that has gone missing in a small town, which has an eerie similarity to a series of crimes committed by a serial killer 20 years prior which left several young boys murdered and another missing young boy never found.
The mystery part of the novel is procedural and told from a third-person perspective of (mainly) two detectives – Pete Willis and Amanda Beck – who are working the case of the missing boy in the current day story. Pete was the detective who worked the similar case 20 years prior and has been brought in to assist based on the similarities of the cases. Are the cases connected? Is it a copycat? The new case brings out a resurgence of interest in the prior case, especially to unresolved questions. What happened to the boy that was never found? Was there, perhaps, an accomplice? Can they find the young boy in time to save him?
The thriller/family drama part is from the first-person perspective of Tom Kennedy, a man who has recently lost his wife, and his strange experiences in a new house he has moved into with his young, eccentric son Jake. They are attempting a fresh, new start in a completely random town and place they find in real estate listings – unlucky for them, they move into the town where this boy has gone missing and end up involved in the case. From Tom’s POV, you get strange events in the night, creepy visitors, and an overall feeling of paranoia as he attempts to figure out what's happening in his new home and, of course, with his young son. Tom and Jake’s role in the overall story is somewhat confusing and highly coincidental. How they relate to the town and the case in question is bizarre at most. The coincidences cannot be revealed without giving spoilers, but I eye-rolled my way through revelation after revelation. Their story (and even how they relate to the town) is a highly emotional account of a man and his son coping with their broken family. Some of the strongest, most beautifully written scenes in the book includes all the family drama and that’s not just limited to Tom and Jake. I saw strong promise here in the writing style. However, these are almost some of the most confusing parts as there is much hinted at that is never resolved - these parts slip into a paranormal (?) realm that is mostly ignored in the overall plot.
Overall, there are way too many perspectives happening that brought this one down for me. Besides Tom and Pete, you also get random other perspectives thrown in that are only a couple of pages long and more distracting than helpful. Switching from first (Tom) to third person (Pete and everyone else) is highly problematic and hard to pull off. In this case, the book suffered from it. Scenes that should have been suspenseful (mostly from Tom’s POV) simply weren’t. The various genres and POVs within a single novel seemed to fight against each other rather than meld together. I didn’t find the book creepy save for a few scenes. I could see the plot unfolding from a mile away and was disappointed with a lack of surprises. As the ending unrolled, more eye-rolling from this one as the most obvious course happened and the coincidences continued.
On the positive side, the author has a talent with words and I could see the promise of a really good novel in this one. It’s almost two books in one (the serial killer and procedural vs. the story of Tom and Jake) and I wish he had picked one and let it shine as center stage. The same story could have been told either way. I also did read it in one sitting as I would call it a page turner. The premise was good in theory (though the more I thought about the whispering, the weirder the concept became in reality). I might recommend this one as the format seems to have worked with a lot of people who rated this pretty high and there are many brilliantly written pages. For me, it came in just about average.