The Whisper Man

The three main characters—Pete Willis, Tom Kennedy, and Jake Kennedy—as well as the unnamed kidnapper, whom the story reveals is Francis Carter, son of the Whisper Man Frank Carter, are all coping with trauma that relates to their father’s behavior toward them. In each case, the character’s attempts to process that trauma drives his story arc.

Pete Willis is haunted by the one murder victim he was unable to find, but the words of his father—who constantly spoke of him as if he were a failure and a disappointment—heavily influence his inability to move on from that unsolved murder case. Tom Kennedy, meanwhile, reckons with Pete’s abandonment of the family and in the wake of Rebecca’s death wonders if his son would be better off without him, a line of thinking that his memory of Pete leaving clearly influences. Tellingly, the trauma Pete’s trauma stemming from his relationship with his father ended up creating the trauma that Tom must cope with, leaving him in a position in which he might repeat these behaviors with his son Jake—and trying to avoid it. The story grapples with the ways in which fathers disappoint their sons and the way that this can create a feedback loop that the next generation might perpetuate.

For Tom to overcome his own inadequacy as a father, he must confront the reality of Pete’s love for him despite Pete’s failings. The revelation that “Mister Night,” Tom’s imaginary friend, was Pete coming to visit his son serves as a turning point in Tom’s thinking: he sees his father’s love through his failures as a man rather than seeing his failures as his defining feature. The book suggests that overcoming this trauma requires facing the truth instead of relying on narratives that have served as emotional security blankets—Tom must let go of his recurring dream and accept that the truth is more complex; he must enter into an adult understanding of that moment from his childhood.

Frank and Francis Carter are another story, as Frank has no desire to see himself as anything other than a powerful psychopath. Although Francis’s actions are reprehensible, the narrative reveals a pathology for his behavior that echoes the healthy relationships among Pete, Tom, and Jake: Francis is looking to correct what he experienced at his father’s hands. When he confronts his father, though, Francis regresses to childhood instead of seeing him in an adult context, which shows that not all traumas can be healed.