
Whisper Down the Lane
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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James Patrick Cronin
About this listen
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, 30 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.
©2021 Clay McLeod Chapman (P)2021 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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I really wanted to like this novel.. but..
- By Wendi on 09-21-19
By: Stephen King
A good ending.
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A decent story.
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This is one of those books that flips back and forth in time, with the earlier period occurring between late 1982 and early 1983. Each chapter in this time period was peppered with popular culture references, particularly the sort that children notice. I happen to have been only a few years older than the main character in that same era, and starting with the Wham! song (released in May 1984) soon made a game of catching how many references were off in this timeline. There were a number!
I kept hoping there would be a false-memory explanation putting his memories in the wrong year or something. The most absurd was a repeated reference to California Raisins, who first appeared in June of 1986. Those two examples are silly and trivial, not really worth having been written about in the first place, but some others are much more important to the plot, especially Master of the Universe (debuted 9/83) and Cabbage Patch Kids (also released later in 1983) There are more I could mention, but it was a fun game so I have only mentioned some. There is even a reversed type of anachronism in the later-set chapters: in 2013 a milk carton has a missing child printed on it, when this practice had died out many years before.
All of which is nerdy as hell of me to point out, but come on, some of this was so far off it should have been caught before release. Almost none of it would be wrong if it had taken place even two years later, so that would be my suggestion for future editions: dump the California Raisins and set that whole part in 1984/85
The mystery and over-the-top thriller material throughout was a lot of fun (maybe fun isn’t the right word) and the historical background is one of the most fascinating recent periods of mass hysteria worth exploring, historically on par with the Salem witch trials or Q-Anon.
The narrator of the audio version, James Patrick Cronin, is a great actor, illustrating here the difference in the listening experience from reading alone. His ability to match some of the admittedly kooky level of melodrama here must be commended.
I was thoroughly entertained and will seek out both this writer and narrator to listen to & may even read this book again, just one star off the story for the consistent pop culture time-slip and some annoyingly repetitive passages in those same “kid-think” chapters.
I hope more Clay McLeod Chapman books become available on Audible soon!
Awesome thriller but have fun counting the anachronisms!
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very good twists
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Good narration, ok story
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Pretty good
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As for the book, parts required some suspension of reality. There were a few questions that weren’t answered to my liking. But the final twist? I must be off my game because I did not predict that!
WOW
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Loved
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The story was absolutely fascinating and enthralling.
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Hit with memories
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