3.5 stars

Jim is a photographer and he suspects a woman he took a picture of knows something about some recent murders, so he sets out to find her. When they figure out what's actually going on, he (and the others) are in for more than they bargained for.

It took a little while to get into it. The book is told from many different points of view, so the first number of chapters are all introducing different characters, so it made it harder for me to get into it, as I was trying to figure out who everyone was. Once I had a better idea of that and after the mystery woman is found, in about the second half, it really picked up for me. Overall, it was good. ( )

This was really written under a pseudonym, and I can see why. It's really way too dark for me.

Re-read December 11, 2011

A serial killer has been viciously murdering women in the Combat Zone, a seedy area of Newford. He makes a mistake when he kills a wealthy man's daughter, apparently mistaking her for one of the prostitutes he normally targets. There's a witness to this one too. He swears the killer stepped out of the side of a building and disappeared the same way.

Detective Thomas Morningstar has mostly left his Kickaha traditions behind on the rez. But something about these killers doesn't feel right, so he seeks help in the most unexpected of places.

And then there's Chelsea, a teen who's already experienced a lifetime of hurt. She's been told that her abusive father is dead, but she can still feel him out there. Searching for her. And she knows this time he won't stop until she's dead.

Still too dark for me. I do like horror, but this is a little too real. The so-called "horror" element doesn't feel real, but the abuse is the true horror. It's nothing gratuitous, but it is more graphic than I would like. Being inside the mind of a pedophile left me feeling dirty and more than a little disturbed. It's hard for me to read that kind of thing at any time, but especially when it involves children.

I miss that none of the Newford regulars showed up in this book. Part of what I love about the Newford books is spotting some of my favorite characters and finding out how they're doing. I know that sounds crazy, but after multiple re-reads of my favorites across 20 books and at least 15 years, they really are old friends.

There are still some of de Lint's trademarks present here though. His good characters genuinely care about other people and try to help where they can. They step out on faith and work through bizarre happenings the best way they know how. I like the way different...spiritual? yes, probably the best word...traditions come together for the common good. And there are the characters who don't let the crappy hand they were dealt in their early years hold them back forever.

Sitting here, really thinking about it, that is probably the point of the book. People live worse things than this every day. I guess de Lint wanted to write about that darkness and point out that where there is darkness, there is always light if we just look for it.

I would not recommend this as an introduction to de Lint, but fans should pick it up as long as they think they can handle it. It does get awfully disturbing in between these pages. ( )

Life regularly delivers the inexplicable and our rational minds strive to recast the events with reason and logic. Charles de Lint, on the other hand, embraces the fringe, creating a fantastical world of magic barely perceptible under the thin veneer of the pedestrian. Most of de Lint’s stories are planted in a light, if sometimes ambiguous, realm. But [From a Whisper to a Scream] more fully examines the darkness.

Patrol Officer Thomas Morningstar shot and killed Teddy Bird in a derelict section of Newford known as the Tombs. Hidden in the trunk of Bird’s Buick were the bodies of several children the dead man had abused and killed. Though Newford breathed easier on that day, just two years later prostitutes in the Tombs are being hunted and slaughtered by someone equally evil. Jim McGann, a newspaper photographer, thinks a young girl captured in photographs of the crime scene crowds is connected to the murders. He calls the girl Niki, after spray-painted graffiti at all of the crime scenes, but the only person who ever called her by that name was her brutal father, Teddy Bird. And though dead, Bird stalks the girl through the Tombs, hoping to reclaim her and be quickened from his ethereal existence in the Otherworld.

De Lint produced this novel and two others under the pen name Samuel M. Key, to warn his fans of the darker subject matter. And though he more frankly examines abuse and violence, the story is still standard de Lint fare. The ending is somewhat anti-climactic, as de Lint is forced to give shape and substance to an unbelievably malevolent and powerful spirit and the resulting form pales in comparison to what the reader’s imagination fills into the shadowy spaces as the story builds. Such is the plight of those who try to recreate the Boogeyman on paper or on screen, for the result never matches up to the mind’s fearful creations. Most critics of Stephen King’s stories have noted a similar let down at the end of his novels.

But even with a less than completely satisfying climax, [From a Whisper to a Scream] delivers. De Lint produces deeply conflicted characters who heroically rise to the challenge without seeming like comic book stand-ups. He creates a world where magic is accessible to anyone willing to believe.

4 bones!!!! ( )

This was a nice way to start off this year's Halloween Group Read.

From a Whisper to a Scream is the second of the three books Charles de Lint wrote books under the pen name of Samuel M. Key. They've since been republished under his real name. They are horror stories in nature and a bit more adult (both in terms of violence and sex) than is his general wont.

This story takes place in his invented city of Newford and tells of Teddy Bird, a pedophile and serial killer, who is finally shot dead by the police. Unfortunately, Teddy's spirit isn't quite done with everything he wanted to do in life and what follows is a fairly classic horror story.

de Lint is good enough at what he does that everything he writes is enjoyable, even when he stretches himself beyond his normal bounds into something that is solidly horror. He manages to craft an atmosphere of tension and fear that will cause the reader to tense up. That said, this isn't his best work. The characters are a bit shallower than normal and I found the ending a bit anticlimactic—a bit too quick and simple.

By all means give it a try if you're interested but, for my part, his earlier Mulengro was a bit better in the horror vein, or The Onion Girl if it's his Newford stuff that interests you. ( )

Terrific Suspenseful. Learned a lot for my own writing. ( )