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A review by ampersandread22
The Whisper Man by Alex North
4.0
Read this and other reviews at Ampersand Read.
There is a Criminal Minds episode where Agent Rossi must visit a serial killer in prison every year on his birthday to get the names and locations of two more bodies (sorry not sorry I just ruined a season 12 plot point if you haven’t already seen it). That was the first thing I thought of when I read the description of The Whisper Man. The “serial killer will only talk to the man who caught him”seems to be a bit of a trope: Silence of the Lambs features it too.
But that concept was just one tiny, misshapen puzzle piece in the 1,000-piece Ravensburger that is this book.
The story is told in alternating points of view: a young father who moves into the town’s resident “creepy house” with his son after the tragic death of his wife, the head detective from the original Whisper Man case, and short, bizarre, creepy chapters from the perspective of the current killer. Tom – the young father narrator – comes across a little pedantic sometimes. His is a narration of telling rather than showing: it is repeated that he feels a “presence” in his new house, that he feels he is “not alone.” It got me rolling my eyes a couple of times, but the book still had me turning pages to find out the next twist.
I think it’s probably a good thing that I don’t focus primarily on mysteries and thrillers in my reading. I would get absolutely nothing done with the rest of my life. If the plot is good, as The Whisper Man’s is, and the clues well placed and the twists unforeseeable, I will sit tight and not put the story down for anything. This book had twists I genuinely did not see coming, that I gasped aloud for. And perhaps more notably, the story got me with its numerous red herrings. There were several clues/characters/points in the plot that I thought were secretly nefarious and/or Significantly Important and they just…weren’t. Sometimes a pen is just a pen. Sometimes a creepy mask is just a Halloween decoration.
The well-timed reveals and my guesses of whodunnit had me reading this creepy tale long after I should have turned out the lights and gotten some shuteye for work the next day. And while the last line of the novel was not as knockout chilling as other reviews led me to believe, I have still recommended this to friends and family who also like a good serial killer tale to spice up their reading lives.
(Also, this book was apparently inspired by the author’s son, who “mentioned one day that he was playing with ‘the boy in the floor.’” If that didn’t clue you in to how creepy this read is, nothing can save you.)
There is a Criminal Minds episode where Agent Rossi must visit a serial killer in prison every year on his birthday to get the names and locations of two more bodies (sorry not sorry I just ruined a season 12 plot point if you haven’t already seen it). That was the first thing I thought of when I read the description of The Whisper Man. The “serial killer will only talk to the man who caught him”seems to be a bit of a trope: Silence of the Lambs features it too.
But that concept was just one tiny, misshapen puzzle piece in the 1,000-piece Ravensburger that is this book.
The story is told in alternating points of view: a young father who moves into the town’s resident “creepy house” with his son after the tragic death of his wife, the head detective from the original Whisper Man case, and short, bizarre, creepy chapters from the perspective of the current killer. Tom – the young father narrator – comes across a little pedantic sometimes. His is a narration of telling rather than showing: it is repeated that he feels a “presence” in his new house, that he feels he is “not alone.” It got me rolling my eyes a couple of times, but the book still had me turning pages to find out the next twist.
I think it’s probably a good thing that I don’t focus primarily on mysteries and thrillers in my reading. I would get absolutely nothing done with the rest of my life. If the plot is good, as The Whisper Man’s is, and the clues well placed and the twists unforeseeable, I will sit tight and not put the story down for anything. This book had twists I genuinely did not see coming, that I gasped aloud for. And perhaps more notably, the story got me with its numerous red herrings. There were several clues/characters/points in the plot that I thought were secretly nefarious and/or Significantly Important and they just…weren’t. Sometimes a pen is just a pen. Sometimes a creepy mask is just a Halloween decoration.
The well-timed reveals and my guesses of whodunnit had me reading this creepy tale long after I should have turned out the lights and gotten some shuteye for work the next day. And while the last line of the novel was not as knockout chilling as other reviews led me to believe, I have still recommended this to friends and family who also like a good serial killer tale to spice up their reading lives.
(Also, this book was apparently inspired by the author’s son, who “mentioned one day that he was playing with ‘the boy in the floor.’” If that didn’t clue you in to how creepy this read is, nothing can save you.)