If you haven’t read the first two ‘Lockwood’ books, The Screaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull, it is about time you did; if you have, you will want to read this as soon as possible. The world is beset by a plague of ghosts that only children (and only some children) can overcome. Lucy, George and Lockwood comprise London’s smallest but most talented psychic investigation agency. The books have excellent characters and are both genuinely scary and genuinely funny (Stroud adeptly moves between these poles as he tightens the screws of the plot). In this book Lucy finds herself developing sympathies for the ghosts, or ‘Visitors’, which both leads her closer to the cause of the Problem and puts her and her colleagues in peril, as does her developing antagonism towards the too-perfect Holly, hired by Lockwood and George as a ‘support staff member’. The first two books can be read as self-contained stories, but this one is barbed throughout with elements that demand further exploration and explanation. What do the ghosts want? Is the plague of ghosts in fact caused or exacerbated by the living? Who is trying to exploit the ghost plague for their own ends? And what ends? You see, I am ready for the next book already.
Oct '15
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