THE WHISPER MAN, Alex North's debut thriller, has so much more to say than "BOO!"

THE WHISPER MAN
ALEX NORTH
Celadon Books
$26.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In this dark, suspenseful thriller, Alex North weaves a multi-generational tale of a father and son caught in the crosshairs of an investigation to catch a serial killer preying on a small town.

After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him and his young son Jake heal. A new beginning, a new house, a new town. Featherbank.

But the town has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed "The Whisper Man," for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.

Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter's crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man.

And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window...

THE PUBLISHER SENT ME A REVIEW COPY OF THIS TITLE. THANK YOU.

My Review: The town of Featherbank has this as its primary claim to fame:

If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.
If you play outside alone, soon you won’t be going home.
If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass.
If you’re lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you.

You're the young single dad of a weirdo son. You know this town's had five young boys kidnapped, interfered with, and murdered. So what do you do, give the place a three-hundred-mile berth as you decide where to run away from your grief and your complete inability to grok your sweet, sensitive son?

Not if you're Tom Kennedy! You *move*there*to*write*! TSTL, anyone? Exacerbated by the fact your spawn is prime meat for this lunatic?

But he's in jail, the perp's been caught, so there's no risk.

Horseshit, says I, my son and I will be moving to Mallorca or Auckland, NOT FEATHERBANK. However, I possess a strong streak of risk-averse-ness that Pa Kennedy doesn't.

Why'd you read it, I hear the review-readers asking. Knowing what was gonna happen, why put yourself through it, the crowd snorts inwardly.

That was the thing about going to sleep. It kind of scrubbed things. Arguments, worries, whatever. You could be scared or upset about something, and you might think sleep was impossible, but at some point it happened, and when you woke up in the morning the feeling was gone for awhile, like a storm passed during the night.
–and–
Guilt. Fear. Anger. Once loose, any one of them would charge off, dragging the others along like dogs chained in a pack. And that was no good at all.
–and–
It was a daunting prospect, because it was all such a jumble, and there was also so much I didn't know and perhaps never would. But then again, I wasn't sure that in itself was a problem. The truth of something can be in the feeling of it as much as the fact.
–and–
But he could read the whole book of his father now and he knew that none of it had ever been about him. His own book was separate, and always had been. He had only ever needed to be himself, and it had just taken time—too much time—to understand that.

This is not ground-breaking prose, jaw-dropping insight, beauteous lapidary phrase-making of a high order; it is, instead, the commonplace recognition of Life's Little Thumps said in ways that any one of us can feel, really and viscerally, instead of the more rarefied and intellectual pleasures of Writing for the Critics.

Tom and Jake, and ultimately the male reader whose relationship with his maleness is built on a partial vacuum, are males groping for a point of commonality that is uniquely theirs. The normal female intermediary is gone. Most men don't try very hard to reach around Ma to get to their sons. Tom has no choice. And, haltingly and awkwardly, he makes connections to and bridges with Jake.

That, theydies and gentlethem, is worth reading average-to-good prose and forgiving the *sheer*boggling*idiocy* of moving your son to a town of known serial-killing-boys past. This is a rare thing. This is a love story about a man who works his brain into a frenzy to find a way to let his son know what all sons most want to know:

Daddy loves you.