Customer Reviews

The Whispering Wall

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Australian writer Carlon's "The Whispering Wall," first published in Australia in 1969, is a claustrophobic tale of tension. Stroke victim Sarah Oatland is entirely paralyzed, able to move only her right eye, with difficulty. Although she can see and hear everything, no one has yet had the patience to notice she can respond.

Her impatient and greedy niece has parceled out Sarah's beloved house to tenants. But, as Sarah is angrily absorbing this outrage, she hears a murder plot through a trick of acoustics in the wall. And then a child, one of the new tenants, discovers Sarah can communicate in blinks.

The plot devices are a bit dated - relying on numerous hidden eavesdroppers and architectural devices - but Carlon's spare writing skillfully communicates the frustration and terror of Sarah's condition and the dilemmas she faces about communication, given her and her hearer's limitations. And along the way, she also learns something more about life.

Sarah Oatland has had a severe stroke, which left her totally paralyzed and unable to speak. Her horrid niece rents out parts of Sarah's house to offset the costs of her care, and Sarah overhears two of the tenants plotting murder. She cannot speak or write or move, so how can she communicate? Through perseverance she starts communicating with a little girl who had the patience to wait for her to blink (once for yes, twice for no), but how can Sarah convey her message if the question is never asked? And after her secret slowly comes to light, her life is in danger as well because no one has the full information. This is a highly compelling thriller that is so unique. The reader is as frustrated as Sarah throughout the book as she struggles to communicate through simple eyeblinks. Such a miniscule amount of information can be conveyed this way! I could hardly put the book down with wondering how it would end!

I've just discovered Patricia Carlon, and I'm thrilled. Carlon has a genius for torturing the reader with unrelenting, ever deepening sensations of suspense. Yet there's nothing gory or gross to disgust us in the plot. Just pure fright, liberally spiced with wit.

In The Whispering Wall, first published in 1969, the heroine is Sarah, a sixty-one year old woman paralyzed by a stroke. She can't move or speak and can just barely raise and lower her eyelids. A second heroine is eleven-year-old Rose, who eventually finds a way to communicate with Sarah.

During the day Sarah's nurse pushes her bed up to the window and against the chimney wall. What no one realizes is that voices from the room below are faintly projected up that wall. Sarah, though "laid out like a fish on a slab," in the words of her nurse, knows better than anyone what's going on in her house.

And in fact, horrible things are going on. A murder plot is afoot, and only the speechless, motionless Sarah can foil it.

Old Sarah with her blinking eye is one of the most engaging characters I've ever encountered in crime fiction. The author does a brilliant job of contrasting the liveliness of Sarah's mind with the helplessness of her body. Carlon herself was deaf from age eleven and lived a secluded life. This may explain her fascination with themes of isolation.

There's a good Afterword in this Soho Crime edition summarizing Carlon's life and her significant contribution to crime fiction.

Patricia Carlon was a British discovery. Her own country, Australia, ignored her for forty years before publishing her. Happily I found her among my Amazon's recommendations. Since Carlon has gone in and out of print over the decades, I intend to grab up all her mysteries without delay.

Perish the thought that any of us should lose our faculties and not be able to communicate when we desperately need to. It is always good reading when a novelist can get you to think inside someone else's head and to ponder how you would react in her circumstances.

Ms. Carlon is a gifted mystery writer along the lines of Peter Lovesey.

This novel is not lily-white, yet it does stop short of some of the more blatant evil that has crept into some of Carlon's other books.

The Whispering Wall is well-crafted without being too dark, and it is a good selection to start with if you would like to give this Australian author a try.