Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman

​Satanic panic of the ‘80s was a real deal. A bizarre specifically 80s version of McCarthyism with the witch hunting taking a distinctly supernatural turn. Apparently, there’s something in people’s collective psyche that craves this sort of insane insidious conspiracy. There are certainly plenty of them now, albeit of a more distinctly political lean.
Back in the '80s, there was a famous trial that set off a chain of events that led a lot of people to believe that the teachers were abusing the kids and forcing them to perform in satanic rituals. An insane theory made popular by the likes of the mustachioed punditry of Geraldo Rivera.
This book is a fictionalized account of the events told from the perspective of the young boy whose lies began the entire thing and an adult who can’t or won’t remember his past even as that past seems determined to hunt him down and make him pay for this forgetting.
Took me a moment to get into, but once I did, the book proved difficult to put down. Very dynamic narrative, very engaging, it draws you right in the way a good spiraling into madness tends to.
I’ve not read the author before, but this was a terrific introduction…the way the real story is made into fiction, the way the fiction veers into supernatural all the while maintaining its stranglehold on reality and its helpless protagonist. The way the past and the present are interwoven so cleverly. The character writing. The meditation on the impermanence and complexity of the memory mechanism and its role in the making of a person. All very good.
I’d say the only two detractors for me…
First, if you’re going to take it back in time, do it right. Don’t have your characters sing along to songs or watch tv that wouldn’t be around until years into the future. The 80s weren’t that long ago and also, there’s internet, it’s all too easy to look up. And yes, one might make an argument that these mistakes were deliberate to highlight the memory glitches, but they didn’t read that way in the context of the novel, they just read like mistakes.
Second, the mystery aspect of it (and this is in many ways a mystery novel), I figured out way, way ahead of the reveal. Not sure if this was my inner detective genius showing off and if it was just made that obvious by the novel, but there it is. Not ideal. Would have liked the reveal to have been more of a surprise.
Other than that, though, a really good read. I’d definitely read more by the author. Recommended.