The Whisper Man

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Part 1, Chapters 1-7

Part 2, Chapters 8-14

Part 2, Chapters 15-21

Part 3, Chapters 22-30

Part 3, Chapters 31-35

Part 4, Chapters 36-42

Part 4, Chapters 43-52

Part 5, Chapters 53-58

Part 5, Chapters 59-66

Part 6, Chapters 67-70

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Part 2, Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary

Part 2 begins with Tom and Jake Kennedy arriving at their new home in Featherbank. Tom at first finds the house’s strange character ominous, and inside, he feels as though they’re not alone. However, Jake is excited about the new home and marvels that it’s theirs, which calms Tom down.

Later, Tom unpacks his books to set up his office; Rebecca always nudged him toward unpacking books right away to make a house feel like home. Tom has a more complicated feeling about the books he’s written, which Rebecca made him display; he hasn’t written a single word in a year.

Tom hears a creaking noise that unnerves him but decides that it’s house settling. He then goes looking for Jake, stopping on the way to look at the mail previous tenants that needs sorting. (The previous owner, Mrs. Shearing, had for years rented the house.) He opens mail for a Dominic Barnett to see that it’s a collection notice. Jake appears with a drawing but is reluctant to show it to Tom. When he relents, Tom sees that it’s a picture of the house, and in the bedroom window is a drawing of Jake and a young girl with “[a] corkscrew smile on her face” (47).

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary

That night, Tom and Jake read The Power of Three by Diana Wynne Jones together. Tom then broaches the subject of Jake’s imaginary friend, asking if she’s still playing with him. Jake says that she’s not there, which Tom uses to pivot to the idea of school starting tomorrow along with the possibility of new, real friends.

Jake suddenly asks if it’s safe and if the door is locked. Tom lies and says that it is even though he’s not sure. Jake is adamant, quoting the rhyme that he heard from his imaginary friend, which unnerves Tom. He promises Jake that he’s safe and that he’ll make sure the door is locked. As he goes downstairs to lock the door, he thinks of the girl whispering in Jake’s ear.

Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary

Pete Willis spends his weekend poking through the countryside, still looking for the clothes or any other evidence of Tony Smith, the boy who went missing 20 years ago and was likely abducted by Frank Carter but never found. He recalls the aftermath of the case: The Smith family had a daughter and in Pete’s view was able to rebuild and move on, but he could never let it go.

Returning to Featherbank, he sees a poster for Neil Spencer, who is still missing. Pete sympathizes with Amanda Beck, who did everything right but still couldn’t find him. Pete reached out to the Frank Carter for an interview, but Carter didn’t want to cooperate. Back at the house, Pete struggles internally with his nightly ritual, confronting his alcoholism with a bottle and a photograph. The voice he fights with in his mind sounds a lot like his father, who was cruel to Pete from an early age. Pete looks at the photograph, a picture of himself and Sally, his ex. He knows that his drinking ruined their relationship and reminds himself that this is how he can refrain despite intense urges.

Part 2, Chapter 11 Summary

After struggling to fall asleep, Tom is awakened by a recurring dream he has: His mother and a man are screaming, and he hears glass breaking. To Tom, this dream is a variation of the last time he saw his father, a moment of violence and abuse that is burned into his memory. When he wakes, Jake is at his bedside, startling him; Jake claims to have heard something outside his window. Tom goes to investigate and finds nothing, but he relents and lets Jake stay in bed with him that night. When Jake asks about Tom’s nightmare, he says that it’s an adult matter and doesn’t explain. Jake then tells Tom that what he heard out the window was someone whispering to him.

Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary

Pete has his own recurring dream about the moment when the Frank Carter case broke. It came when Carter’s wife, Jane, called Pete and told him he needed to hurry to rescue her and her son, Francis. Pete came immediately and was led to an extension on the house. Inside were the bodies of the missing children (except for Tony Smith) and a mural of childlike drawings of nature on the walls.

Pete wakes from the dream and goes about his morning routine until he notices that he has a missed call: Frank Carter has decided to meet with him.

Part 2, Chapter 13 Summary

It’s Jake’s first day at Rose Terrace Primary School, and Tom takes him after snapping a first-day photo in their house. He drops Jake at his classroom door and hands him his Packet of Special Things.

A fellow parent, Karen, introduces herself and notices how worried Tom seems. They have a nice chat, and Tom commits her name to memory before walking home. At the house, as he tries to shake off his dreads getting to work and start his writing, something he sees out his window interrupts him: a man standing at the door of his detached garage. Before Tom can confront the man, he comes to the front door.

Part 2, Chapter 14 Summary

The man is short and bald and dressed in a suit. He doesn’t introduce himself. Instead, he says that he’s an old resident of the house and would like to look around. Tom refuses and presses the man on why he was poking around the garage, which he denies. As he’s leaving, Tom calls him Mr. Barnett—the name of the man whose mail he read—and the man denies being Barnett.

After the man leaves, Tom goes to the garage, which he hadn’t had time to deal with yet. He unlocks it and sees that its full of junk. As he pokes around a collection of old boxes, he opens one, and a large, colorful butterfly emerges, startling him. Several more are in the box, and he marvels at them thriving in such a lifeless place.

Part 2, Chapters 8-14 Analysis

Tom and Jake’s arrival in Featherbank draws them closer to the novel’s main plot, though Tom remains unaware of his close connection to their new house—and its connection to the Whisper Man killings—until much later in the story. Jake’s imaginary friend serves as a misdirect, allowing Tom, as a father worried about his son, to chalk up Jake’s strange behavior to being a kid with a weird imagination—and to dismiss Jake’s fears as a matter of course despite Jake’s claim that someone was whispering to him outside his window.

A larger question left ambiguous throughout the novel is whether Jake is speaking with ghosts. The writing style places Jake’s imaginary friend in the realm of the uncanny: Evidence may support a rational explanation, but at moments the imaginary friend’s preternatural knowledge or awareness seem beyond the scope of a six-year-old boy and what Jake has experienced. The young girl represents his deceased mother, Rebecca, though Tom doesn’t realize that. Ultimately, the narrative doesn’t fully answer whether any elements of the story are supernatural, as Tom finds rational explanations for most—but not all—of his son’s behavior. This mirrors Tom’s own uncertainty about his son’s sometimes eerie behavior in the wake of Rebecca’s death.

The story explores other elements of the lingering effects of trauma through Tom and Pete’s recurring dreams. Tom’s recurring dream about his father (whom he doesn’t yet know is Pete Willis) suggests that he’s holding onto something he can’t process, much like Pete’s dream of discovering the murdered children. The depiction of these recurring dreams is imagistic and repetitive for Tom: “Glass smashing. My mother screaming. A man shouting” (59). For Pete, though, the whole scene plays out, and the same pattern describes his waking life—“Gym. Paperwork. Admin.” (65)—suggesting that his reality lies in the past.

That’s not the only evidence that Pete is a broken, traumatized man. His alcoholism is a recurring theme in the book, as his unhealthy ritual of temptation and abnegation shows. Like Tom, trauma related to his father affects part of Pete’s psyche, but for Pete, the cruelty was toward him, and he still hears his father’s voice when he engages in negative self-talk. Each of the main male characters in the story has a narrative arc rooted in finding ways to overcome trauma, and these chapters lay the groundwork for the challenges to come.

Meanwhile, more clues hint at the Kennedy family’s connection to the abduction plot. Norman Campbell’s arrival at the house is a red herring, though his knowledge of Frank Carter‘s crimes will become an important part of the case. The “corpse moth” butterflies that Tom discovers in his garage because of Campbell’s visit is another hint that all is not well at his new home, as is his uneasy feeling about the house. The whispering at the window is the biggest clue: Although Tom dismisses it as Jake’s imagination, it’s aligns with the Frank Carter murders and hints that Jake may be a target.