Clay McLeod Chapman’s The Remaking was one of my favorite horror novels of 2019, it played with modern folklore and media and a very smart way. When I heard about his follow-up, Whisper Down the Lane, the premise had me hooked (see cover copy below). The Satanic Panic of the 1980s sets the tone for a story told in parallel storylines. One features, Sean in 1983 as a young boy who, along with his single mother, find themselves at the center of an investigation about a teacher doing inappropriate things to children. The other storyline features Richard, an art teacher married to colleague who is trying to be a father to her son Elijah. Then a ritualistically killed rabbit is found on the football field, which brings up dark memories from Richard’s past.
Inspired by the McMartin preschool trials and the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s, the critically acclaimed author of The Remaking delivers another pulse pounding, true-crime-based horror novel.
Richard doesn’t have a past. For him, there is only the present: a new marriage to Tamara, a first chance at fatherhood to her son Elijah, and a quiet but pleasant life as an art teacher at Elijah’s elementary school in Danvers, Virginia. Then the body of a rabbit, ritualistically murdered, appears on the school grounds with a birthday card for Richard tucked beneath it. Richard doesn’t have a birthday—but Sean does . . .
Sean is a five-year-old boy who has just moved to Greenfield, Virginia, with his mother. Like most mothers of the 1980s, she’s worried about bills, childcare, putting food on the table . . . and an encroaching threat to American life that can take the face of anyone: a politician, a friendly neighbor, or even a teacher. When Sean’s school sends a letter to the parents revealing that Sean’s favorite teacher is under investigation, a white lie from Sean lights a fire that engulfs the entire nation—and Sean and his mother are left holding the match.
Now, thirty years later, someone is here to remind Richard that they remember what Sean did. And though Sean doesn’t exist anymore, someone needs to pay the price for his lies.
As Sean’s story unfolds, Chapman does a superb job of building empathy for the young boy by firmly entrenching the reader in his head. We feel his fears for his mother, we feel the pressure placed upon him to reveal that his teacher abused him and other children as part of a Satanic ritual. Sean is most definitely a victim, just not a victim of his teacher. Rather, a victim of the parents, investigators, and psychologists who goad Sean into telling them the story THEY wish to hear, rather than the truth.
As Richard’s story reveals itself, Chapman does an equally fine job of putting his in his head. To be fair, since Richard’s half of the story is told in first person narrative, it is a little easier for the reader to get in Richard’s head. Be that as it may, the empathy is present; Richard’s love for Tamara, his hope of connecting with Elijah and having the young boy call him dad, as well as Richard’s fears as the strange events unfold around him.
Like he did with The Remaking, Chapman takes very real-life events and uses that as a launching pad to spin a gripping story out of those events. He does a fantastic job of humanizing the participants of what would seem to be a larger-than-life bombastic news story. I’ve long been fan of parallel narratives and here in Whisper Down the Lane, Chapman builds up the tension in both Sean and Richard’s stories. It is probably not much of a secret that these stories converge in some fashion, but how Chapman builds towards this convergence is extremely effective. He has a knack for creating a compulsive narrative, which is why I burned through the novel in a couple of days, Whisper Down the Lane was extremely challenging to set down.
While I was somewhat expecting and hoping for novel that was more rooted in horror, the fact that it wasn’t and read more like a psychological thriller ultimately worked very well. That said, Champan’s novel has some truly gruesome, creepy, evocative imagery and terrifying elements that linger. Throughout both of the parallel storylines, the level of suspense is very high. Especially as Richard finds himself at the center of dark events, we are forced, along with Richard, to question his own sanity and exactly who he is up until the thrilling and revelatory climax of the novel.
Though somewhat different in many ways, I couldn’t help but find resonance between Whisper Down the Lane for the tone and less than straight-forward narrative with Paul Tremblay’s masterpiece Head Full of Ghosts.
Whisper Down the Lane is a potent, compulsive thriller with horrific elements that is one of the most gripping novels I’ve read this year. Much like The Reckoning, I expect Chapman’s novel will fare quite nicely when I put together my best reads of the year list.
Highly recommended
© 2021 Rob H. Bedford
Quirk Books | April 2021
Hardcover | 305 pages
https://claymcleodchapman.com/books/#whisper-down-the-lane-a-novel
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
I enjoyed THE REMAKING, too, though maybe not as much as you did, Rob. This premise is really intriguing, too, and your review is whetting my appetite for the novel.
The book wasn’t what I expected it would be and that was NOT a problem for me.