Whistle by Linwood Barclay
A cursed train set wreaks havoc
All aboard the crazy train!
Folks, I’m thrilled to recommend this horror novel for your eerie entertainment. I know, I know, the pitch — a cursed train set that causes death and dismemberments galore — sounds ridiculous, but this is actually a fantastic story that is thoroughly entertaining, chocked full of interesting characters, and which sticks the landing with a thoroughly satisfying chef’s kiss of a third act.
I ripped through this book.
The main focus of the novel is bereaved children’s author, Annie. She’s had a shit year, to say the least. First, her husband died (killed by a hit and run driver) and then she became a media pariah after her latest picture book (about a sweet little penguin who learns how to fly) inspired a preschooler to jump off a balcony and go splat.
Deciding she needs to take a break from her work and the city, she and her young son, Charlie, decamp to a rental house upstate for the summer. And that’s when things get super weird. The house isn’t haunted, per se, but there is certainly something strange afoot.
Unable to focus on creating a new penguin story, Annie allows the muse to guide her inspiration — except the new character she comes up with is very much not child-friendly. It’s a rat-wolf hybrid. And it’s terrifying.
Charlie, meanwhile, has his own obsessions. If he’s not playing with a train set he found boxed up in the house’s shed, then he’s doing lap after lap of the property on the new second-hand bike he bought from the local thrift store like some kind of sweaty maniac.
After befriending an elderly neighbor, Annie learns that tragedy has occurred in the house in the past. Before long, she’s hearing phantom train whistles in the middle of the night, Charlie starts sleepwalking into rural darkness, and it begins to become clear that no, it’s not the house at all — rather, there is something corrupt about the toy train that Charlie’s playing with…
Whistle intercuts between Annie and Charlie in the present with a parallel narrative that not only details the misfortunes of that particular toy train’s former owner, but also to provide context as to whatever the hell is so deranged about this loco-motive (geddit?).
A couple of decades earlier, in another small town several hours away, a toy train shop seemingly appeared out of nowhere overnight: Choo-Choo’s Trains. The owner, Edwin, appears for all the world to be a stereotypical model train nerd, even going so far as to habitually wear a conductor’s cap and jacket emblazoned with North American railroad patches. But he’s actually a monster.
Harry, the local chief of police, quickly becomes suspicious of Edwin. As a series of bizarre tragedies occur across the town, he notices that in each case there is a brand new toy train set chugging away nearby.
While mostly a fairly cozy throwback supernatural chiller, horror heads will appreciate that Whistle doesn’t just possess a spooky vibe, it also has some grisly nastiness to it too. Case in point: a victim’s body is discovered with all his bones surgically removed.
Apparently written as a homage to early Stephen King, Whistle is a wild ride with some fantastic twists which I didn’t see coming, but which seemed entirely correct for the story. It’s a brilliant horror novel that keeps chug-chug-chugging along. Utterly unputdownable.
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