400 pages
English language
Published Sept. 16, 2013 by Disney-Hyperion.
When the dead come back to haunt the living, Lockwood & Co. step in . . .
For more than fifty years, the country has been affected by a horrifying epidemic of ghosts. A number of Psychic Investigations Agencies have sprung up to destroy the dangerous apparitions.
Lucy Carlyle, a talented young agent, arrives in London hoping for a notable career. Instead she finds herself joining the smallest, most ramshackle agency in the city, run by the charismatic Anthony Lockwood. When one of their cases goes horribly wrong, Lockwood & Co. have one last chance of redemption. Unfortunately this involves spending the night in one of the most haunted houses in England, and trying to escape alive.
Set in a city stalked by spectres, The Screaming Staircase is the first in a chilling new series full of suspense, humour and truly terrifying ghosts. Your nights will never be the same …
When the dead come back to haunt the living, Lockwood & Co. step in . . .
For more than fifty years, the country has been affected by a horrifying epidemic of ghosts. A number of Psychic Investigations Agencies have sprung up to destroy the dangerous apparitions.
Lucy Carlyle, a talented young agent, arrives in London hoping for a notable career. Instead she finds herself joining the smallest, most ramshackle agency in the city, run by the charismatic Anthony Lockwood. When one of their cases goes horribly wrong, Lockwood & Co. have one last chance of redemption. Unfortunately this involves spending the night in one of the most haunted houses in England, and trying to escape alive.
Set in a city stalked by spectres, The Screaming Staircase is the first in a chilling new series full of suspense, humour and truly terrifying ghosts. Your nights will never be the same again . . .
Well, once I forged ahead chapter one, the rest of the book is not as disturbing as the fist few pages of the book. Actually the rest of the story is quite average and a little bit obvious. But the world is believable. It has some issues toward the end, and it telegraphs who is the killer, but it's a decent story for a YA book.
A fairly fun read. The world building is solid and engaging and the characters are well filled out and believable. The narrator is incredibly un-self-aware/unreliable in her descriptions of her peers/job/the world around her, which is mostly entertaining and makes the book more believable.
The one place where this rubs wrong is her descriptions of one of her friends who she really hasn't warmed up to in this book, and can be a little uncomplementary. By the second or third book, it's clear this was an authorial choice and the two warm up to each other (only to be supplanted by a new character the narrator initially dislikes!).
Despite some good moments towards the end, the whole thing – world-building, dialogue, description – is rather mediocre. A pity.
