Whistle in the Dark: A Novel

When one is really scared, one is advised to “whistle a happy tune.” The main characters in this book literally whistle in the dark. Lana Maddox, the daughter of parents Jen and Hugh, went missing for four days. When she is recovered, beaten and bruised and with a serious head injury, she cannot say what happened to her. The mother is consumed by her guilt because of the long standing rupture in the mother/daughter relationship. The fragile nature of Lana’s psyche has focused the family’s attention on her to a stifling degree and to the detriment of the older, seemingly more compliant daughter.

The reader will soon lose patience with the angst of the mother and her passive-aggressive relationship with Lana. The father seems stable and less consumed by discovering what really happened to his missing daughter. Lana is certainly a weirded-out teenager who has been suicidal and injurious to herself. The mother’s quest to solve the mystery of her daughter’s disappearance pushes her to her own dark place. Disjointed writing and unlikeable characters make this book hard to define as either family or thriller. A book searching for a theme.