Book Review: "Whistle" by Linwood Barclay

Okay, so I have to say that I only bought this book because there was a review by Stephen King on the cover. I'm starting to believe though that Stephen King may be simply lending his one-phrase reviews to books by authors who have enough money to pay him nine times out of ten. Linwood Barclay was an author I'd heard of before but this has to be one of the first books I'm reading by him as it is one of his first forays into horror. Be that as it may, there are both positives and negatives about this book that we are going to investigate here and perhaps, I have learnt a very important lesson about not just going with whatever Stephen King tells me to read. Sometimes, we aren't on the same page.

So we start off with the story of Annie Blunt. Her husband has died after being hit by a car. The problem is that his famed watch is actually missing from the body and she is adamant that it would be horrifying to steal something from someone who was lying on the ground dying. Yes, she's completely right. But atop of this she's an author of some famous children books - one of which inspires a child called Evan to spread his cardboard wings and fly. So he flew. Right off the balcony of his parents' apartment building and plummetted to his death. Feeling the guilt and blame, she and her son Charlie move away from Manhattan and out to a house in the middle of nowhere where she thinks she can collect her feelings. I think that the author establishes the story quite well and the atmosphere is that of an urban thriller. However, the convoluted story which evolves gives rise to quite a thrill-killing vibe which I could not abide by. As I've always said, too many characters and side stories makes for an atmosphere-killing horror novel.

This is where though, we start to get the side stories concerning someone who's body has turned up and a train set that Charlie finds on the property which seems to have its own background to it (see: prologue). Though all of this is well-written, the story could have had so much more going on in terms of atmosphere. It got to the point where there was so much exposition in terms of who's who, where's where and what's what, that I felt like I was being taught something rather than being sucked into a nightmarish landscape where anything could turn everything upside down by a tip of a hat. For the first perhaps 25% of the book there was lots of atmosphere and then we start introducing a whole host of new characters and one of these characters is quite important but has no real atmosphere relating to them. The character (whom I'm not going to name as it'll give it away), is introduced about a quarter of the way through but doesn't feel important because everything they have just feels like an introduction.

Be that as it may, I was interested to see what happened next, not in a 'gripping the edge of my seat' way but I actually cared about the main character and her son. This is quite difficult to achieve in a genre which is so dominated by female suffering that it actually seems silly at most points. I would rather call this book a psychological thriller because most of the time is relies on the reader's understanding of the way Annie is dealing with grief to process what is going on in the story, especially concerning the whistling sound she keeps hearing. As for the 'horror' subgenre this is probably shelved under most of the time, I would not go there since the book doesn't contain anything frightening. Everything does however, feel like a circumstance of her grief, which makes a great explanation for what happens towards the end of the book when it comes to her son.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read though I felt like I was in two minds about it by the end. I would say, if you like psychological thriller that borders on horror then you will adore this book.