The Whispering by Veronica Lando

Winner of the 2021 Banjo Prize for Fiction, The whispering is an Australian rural noir that grabs the reader’s attention right from the beginning. Its plot is original and there are many  surprising twists and turns  to keep any lover of the mystery genre glued to the page.

Callum Haffenden returns to Granite Creek Far North Queensland when he hears that a local Lachie Briggs has gone missing in the rainforest. He joins in the search, uncovering long buried secrets. Two girls went missing lost seventeen years apart, the body of 2-year-old Amelia never found, and Callum, once an award-winning investigative journalist is determined to uncover the past.

The landscape that Lando describes is dark and foreboding. The rainforest drips with rain and thick vegetation that clutch at anyone who moves away from the paths. There is a strange whisper from the forest that lures people to the treacherous boulders and the threat of a cyclone makes everything worse. Children chant rhymes and wear bracelets with little bells attached to them to drown out the eerie whispers, and Callum is reminded of the belief that many townspeople have that The whispering wild will take your child if you dare to look away ...

Callum has experienced the danger of the boulders for himself, having a leg caught in a crevice and now wears a prosthetic, making it even more difficult for him to face the peril of the rainforest. Lando strews red herrings across the path of the reader in this complex multilayered story, moving from one suspect to another with the culmination of some surprising revelations at the book’s stunning conclusion.

Readers who have enjoyed books by Jane Harper and Christian White or Wake by Shelley Burr and The wrong woman by J.P. Pomare are likely to enjoy The whispering.

Themes: Mystery, Crime, Rainforest, Bullying, Abuse.

Pat Pledger