The Whistler

The snitch, Todd Short, has decided after 15 years that he wants to clear his conscience. He says he feels felt terrible about lying on the stand and putting an innocent man on death row. However, it has been 15 years since Junior Mace’s conviction, and Short has been living a good life all that time. He waited to clear his conscience until he had nothing left to lose.

Carlita’s rescue goes so smoothly that it adds little dramatic tension. However, it supports the theme of women’s relationships with one another. Lacy’s prioritizing a woman she has never met but who is in a vulnerable situation is crucial to the story. Most of the men discourage Lacy from acting out of concern for her safety, but they don’t recognize her need to have the other woman’s back. Lacy represents how women’s relationships with one another exist outside of men’s society. Women have their own social organization, exclusive to themselves, just as men do.

Gunther once again comes through for his sister. As a character, Gunther has a dramatic, colorful, and larger-than-life personality that provides some comic relief. Although his abrasiveness might indicate indifference to the feelings of other people, he appears to have a sound understanding of his sister, recognizing her need to attack problems head-on, perhaps because that is his own nature. He’s brash, bold, headstrong, and bossy, but he supports his sister in a way that the other men don’t. Rather than discouraging her from acting, he throws himself into the action as well, providing backup and technical support, such as the plane and the flight to rescue Carlita. The siblings are alike in profound ways despite their superficial difference in presentation.

The physical closeness of the two women in the back seat of the plane conveys the essence of woman-to-woman relationships. Although they’re complete strangers to each other, Lacy recognizes another woman’s need for physical connection and provides it. They hug when they part, not because they’ve become friends but because they have made a particularly female connection that allows for an intimacy specific to female relationships.

The scene with Pacheco, coming immediately after the one between Lacy and Carlita, contrasts the different levels of intimacy possible between two women versus a man and a woman. Lacy is in no rush to engage in a romantic relationship. Whereas she feels comfortable hugging Carlita within a few hours of their meeting, she keeps Pacheco at a friendly distance.

In Chapter 6, Judge McDover reflects that at the time of Junior’s trial, she genuinely believed him to be guilty. She doesn’t acknowledge that her preconception led her, consciously or otherwise, to slant the trial in the prosecution’s favor. Her prejudging the defendant reveals that she engaged in corruption even before she met Vonn Dubose. This is consistent with her admission to him that she was never an innocent, although she wasn’t thinking of Junior’s trial when she spoke to him. McDover’s prejudice is an example of one of the flaws in our legal system. Judges are human. Humans make mistakes, and a prejudiced judge can unintentionally tilt a trial one way or the other.

Gunther is convinced that prisons are full because of rampant crime. In fact, actual crime rates are declining while Americans’ perception of the threat of crime increases. Although incarceration rates declined in the US after 2019, the nation still has the world’s highest incarceration rate.