Whisper Down the Lane

A Novel

By: Clay McLeod Chapman

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

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 Publishing

A good ending.

I honestly didn’t think it would end the way that it did, but I was very pleased! The author sometimes it’s a little too descriptive in a situation but I urge you to keep going with the story because the ending leaves a lot of room for thought and contemplation.

A decent story.

This was a decent story, I found it to be a little predictable before the ending, but still worth listening too. The narrator did a good job with the narration.

Awesome thriller but have fun counting the anachronisms!

The plot was excellent and would absolutely make a great movie, honestly I loved it, but this book could have benefited from some serious editing!

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!

very good twists

there were some pretty good twists in the story that surprised u in the end

Good narration, ok story

Story is a little slow and easy to get bogged down in detail. 3 stars

Pretty good

I liked it but it wasn’t anything spectacular. The twists were pretty easy to figure out. It was still a fun read though.

WOW

First off, huge props on the performance.
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!

Loved

This book was wonderfully written with lots of little Easter eggs thrown in. I absolutely loved the narrator. His voice and performance were perfection! The psychological twisting this book put me through was amazing. I love the main character and couldn't help to root for him even when the book leads you to believe he's the bad guy. I honestly could not put this book down!

The story was absolutely fascinating and enthralling.

The ending, imo, was awful. It was anticlimactic, left so much to be desired.

Hit with memories

It wasn’t so much about the story as it was reminding myself living through the 80s and how people just go through pics and will blame anything on anybody they all want an enemy. The story was very well written and hearing the past as well as the current situation, the character in the book slowly going insane is it real? Is it not? I really enjoyed this book.