BOOKS
WHISTLE
Blood On The Tracks
In the acknowledgements to Linwood Barclay’s terrific new novel Whistle, some chap called Stephen King gets a “special thank you” for reading a first draft and being “encouraging from the get-go”. On one level, this is just a personal and professional courtesy, and yet it’s perhaps also revealing. Obviously, King remains the horror master. If he rates the novel, it might be pretty good. More subtly, King’s evocations of the Eastern seaboard of the USA invariably find the mysterious in the everyday, which is exactly what Barclay tries to do here.
On which subject, what could be more mundane than a toy train set? To employ a word that’s hated by Edwin Nabler, proprietor of Choo-Choo’s Trains, model railways are cute. Except, that is, when they’re built or modified by Nabler, who manifests in human form but, it’s probably not giving away too much to say, is a creature altogether stranger.