The Whisper Man

Pete Willis is a recovering alcoholic and police detective whose life was changed by his role as the lead detective in the Whisper Man abductions 20 years before the story’s events. The image of the four bodies he found in Frank Carter’s home haunt him; the one child who was never found, Tony Smith, haunts him even more. He lives a tightly regimented life of physical fitness and work, and he spends his free time combing the countryside for evidence of Tony Smith’s body. His interest in missing children cases draws him into the investigation on Neil Spencer’s disappearance. Although he’s a good detective, his career has stalled out, and the weight he bears stemming from the Whisper Man murders is clearly part of the reason.

Pete’s alcoholism—and the accompanying self-loathing to which the cruelty of his emotionally abusive father adds—leads him to engage in a nightly ritual with an unopened bottle of vodka: He looks at a picture of his ex-wife Sally on a day when they were happy and reminds himself of what he lost because of his drinking. Left out of this ritual is any thought of his son, Tom Kennedy, whom Pete deliberately doesn’t let himself think about.

His chance encounter with Tom and Jake provides him with hope for the first time since he left Sally (and Tom), and he agrees to babysit Jake on the night that he’s abducted. Though Francis Carter stabs Pete, which eventually culminates in his death, his having reconnected with his son and bonded with his grandson give him a sense of completion as he dies.

Jake is Tom Kennedy’s six-year-old son, and at the novel’s outset, he—like his father—is coping with Rebecca’s death and struggling to understand his father’s love for him. The trauma of discovering his mother exacerbates his pain, and his insular nature in the wake of the tragedy makes him a target for classmates’ cruelty. He adopts unusual coping mechanisms, like carrying a Packet of Special Things (a collection of items that have personal significance to him, including artifacts from Rebecca’s childhood, her marriage to Tom, and other items to which Jake has attached meaning) and his imaginary friend, a young girl in a blue dress who represents Rebecca when she was a child.

When Tom suggests that they make a fresh start in a new home, Jake recognizes a particular house as the one in a photo of his mother and pushes Tom toward that house as an attempt to reconnect with her, though he’s incapable of expressing this to his father. The new school, however, proves to be a challenge for Jake, and his difficulty adjusting brings him to the attention of Francis Carter (George Saunders), the kidnapper. Jake internalizes his discussions with Francis and expresses them through a new imaginary friend, the boy in the floor, whose arrival coincides with Jake seeing the letter Tom was writing to Rebecca that details his difficulty in parenting Jake. This makes Jake susceptible to the kidnapper, who is looking for troubled children and identifies Jake as troubled.

The events surrounding the kidnapping—and Jake’s conversations with his imaginary friend—show that he clearly understands the danger he’s in, but Jake generally has difficulty understanding the adult world. The crisis of his kidnapping makes one thing clear to him: His father loves him profoundly. This knowledge gives Jake the strength to go downstairs and pound on the door, which leads to his rescue. The novel ends with Jake growing closer to his father, and though he still speaks to imaginary friends, it’s clear that the psychological threat of them has softened.

Amanda Beck, a relative rookie compared to Pete Willis, is a by-the-book detective who’s determined to rise like her chief, Officer Lyons. As she becomes more involved in the Neil Spencer kidnapping case—and closer to Pete Willis as a result—she begins to wonder if she’ll have the resolve and the will to keep the difficult cases from affecting her the way that she sees they’ve affected Pete. She sees Pete as both a kindred spirit and a warning, and as the case progresses she finds herself increasingly identifying herself in him. When Pete does something that gives him hope (watching Jake while Tom goes on a date), she pushes him to go in part because she conflates his ability to feel happiness with her own. As a result, she’s wracked with guilt after his stabbing, and it becomes clear that her job will weigh heavily on her.

Frank Carter is the sociopathic Whisper Man, who murdered five boys 20 years ago while his wife and son were unwitting accomplices. He’s a notorious figure in Featherbank’s history, and he relishes his legend in the prison and in the world of people whom his crimes fascinate. He antagonizes Pete Willis, treating him as a confidant so that he can mock Pete about the whereabouts of his last victim.

Although Frank is a static character who remains in some ways unknowable, he does have a clear motivation: reconnecting with his son. The narrative reveals that Frank’s victims, whose faces were covered, were stand-ins for his son, Francis Carter. In this way, his narrative arc mirrors the story’s main arc, but his is a twisted subversion of the catharsis that Pete, Tom, and Jake feel. Frank wants to reconnect with his son not as an act of healing but to continue his torment and close the loop of his crimes.

Francis Carter, also known as George Saunders and in some chapters as an unnamed man, is Frank Carter’s son. He abducts and murders young Neil Spencer and later kidnaps Jake Kennedy. His father’s crimes—which Francis witnessed and knows were a proxy for the violence Frank wished to inflict on him—continue to traumatize him. As a result, he’s compelled to try to correct the horrors he witnessed, which leads to two competing motivations for his crimes: a desire to save boys from troubled homes, and a desire to punish them for their bad behavior. Despite loathing his father’s horrific actions and despite being terrified of him, Francis longs for his father’s approval. Francis’s capture and arrest put him back in contact with Frank, and Francis initially thinks he’ll be prison royalty like his father, but instead he’s once again the target of his father’s hatred.

Norman Collins is a prime suspect in Neil Spencer’s abduction because of his trespassing on Tom Kennedy’s property and his interest in the Whisper Man cases 20 years ago. Although he’s cleared of involvement in the kidnapping, the story reveals that he murdered Dominic Barnett, a previous tenant of Tom’s home, and knows that Tony Smith’s body is beneath Tom Kennedy’s garage. Norman considers himself a collector of items related to vicious crimes, and he knows both Victor Tyler (a prison associate of Frank Carter’s) and Dominic Barnett through this hobby, as he paid them to view Smith’s remains. While he’s ultimately a red herring, after his arrest, his confession provides the police with the impetus to look at Victor Tyler’s other visitors.