Book review: Whistle by Linwood Barclay

Whistle by Linwood Barclay dips into the supernatural / horror genres which I don’t usually read. I didn’t realise it when I bought it at the local second-hand bookstore and might not have picked it up had I realised. It’s interesting as I used to love Stephen King back in the 1990s and wasn’t bothered by the unexplainable, but nowadays I need my baddies (antagonists) to be soused in realism – albeit with sociopathic, psychopathic or vengeful tendencies. However… I’ve not got a lot of reading fodder at the moment so I hung in there, which was easy enough to do as Barclay boxes this book into separate segments and timelines following a scene-setting prologue.

Annie Blunt has had an unimaginably terrible year. First, her husband was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident, then one of the children’s books she’s built her writing and illustrating career on ignited a major scandal. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves with her son Charlie to a charming small town in upstate New York where they can begin to heal.

But Annie’s year is about to get worse.

Bored and lonely in their isolated new surroundings, Charlie is thrilled when he finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed on their property. Annie is glad to see Charlie happy, but there’s something unsettling about his new toy. Strange sounds wake Annie in the night—she could swear she hears a train, but there isn’t an active track for miles—and bizarre things begin happening in the neighborhood. Worse, Annie can’t seem to stop drawing a disturbing new character that has no place in a children’s book.

Grief can do strange things to the mind, but Annie is beginning to think she’s walked out of one nightmare straight into another, only this one is far more terrifying…

The main character in the present is a children’s author and illustrator Annie who found fame writing stories of Pierce the Penguin but has been struggling to write since Pierce Takes Flight inspired a young boy to make cardboard wings and leap from a balcony to his death. In a Annus Horribilis she was finally recovering when her husband was killed in an accident. Needing a break her publisher finds her a rural house where she and her young son Charlie can spend the summer.

We also head back to 2000 to a small town called Lucknow where a toy train store (Choo-Choo’s Trains) seems to have popped up overnight. We learn owner Edwin Choo/Nabler makes the trains and their accessories (people, buildings, animals, scenery) himself onsite. We also spend time with the local Sheriff Harry Cook whose quiet town has been upended with the disappearance of two men. And more recently, animals. And this is where the book gets somewhat macabre. No spoilers… but we know looooong before Harry what’s happening to the missing residents and pets.

Although it’s inexplicable, Harry senses there’s something amiss with Edwin and his trains when their purchasers seem to befall unusual accidents.

In the present Charlie’s found an old train set from Choo-Choo’s Trains and becoming increasingly obsessed with it. Annie worries when she starts hearing the train even though it’s not running and she’ being woken by nightmares caused by the events of the last year and the sound of a train whistle, though there are no tracks nearby.

Their worlds intersect and we learn the truth about Edwin and his role in causing death and creating chaos and discover it’s not kismet (or bloody bad luck) that leads Charlie and Annie to his door, rather it’s by design. And with that Barclay cleverly steers us through a door we didn’t know was there. This is a new direction for Barclay (though I felt Look Both Ways dipped into something more macabre) and lovers of Stephen King at his prime will certainly enjoy it. I liked the characters on offer here and Barclay paces this well and, though we know (but don’t understand) the how, we eventually learn the why.