Whistle

Author: Linwood Barclay
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Published: May 20, 2025

Reading this book, I could not help but make comparisons to the creepy guy in the hat, Charlie Manx, in Nos4a2. Whistle had the same kind of impending dread, of something just beyond consciousness, that you knew was bringing evil to town.

How can the words “ChuffchuffCLICKETYCLACKclikcetyCLACK-wooWOOchuffCLICKETYchuffCLICKETYchuff” hold such horror? How can the innocuous train spinning around the Christmas tree that we see as a symbol of the holidays hold such suspense? Linwood Barclay, that’s how!

Annie Blount is a children’s author who has gone through a great deal of trauma over the past year. Her editor takes all the guesswork out of vacation planning by renting a beautifully renovated house in the country, away from the hustle and bustle of NYC. The first sign that it may not be the bucolic country home she thinks, comes when a neighbor is unpardonably rude. And then her son Charlie finds the train in the backyard shed. And things start to get weird.

Told from the perspective of 23 years earlier when the train store comes to Lucknow, and the investigation of the proprietor by the good-intentioned Chief of Police, Harry Cook, to the present-day disappearance of Charlie, the author is not afraid to “kill his darlings”. You have been warned! If that’s not convincing enough, the author gives a special thanks to Stephen King in the acknowledgements.

Read this now. Because, according to Barclay, “this might not be my last time exploring an even darker world.”

Much thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for taking me on my beginning foray into horror with this advance reader’s copy!

Thanks to Yucel Moran @unsplash for the background photo.