The Screaming Staircase is a multi-tentacled peg not even attempting to fit into a square hole – it is pretty much indefinable. Steampunk ghost-busters with a little bit of spooky London atmosphere thrown in? Parts of it feel quite historical… until you realise that George is wearing trainers. It’s funny, and horrific, and the whole thing is quite clearly an adventure story.

Set in a world where vengeful ghosts are the norm and adults are not sensitive enough to spot their approach until too late, the only way of dealing with the supernatural are the rapiers, iron filings, silver and Greek fire of the Agencies, who employ children and teenagers to do the dangerous work of hunting and making safe the ghosts.

Lockwood and Co. Psychic Investigations Agency are unusual because this Agency has no adult pulling the strings, but when a mission goes very wrong, Lockwood, Lucy and George face closure and disgrace… unless they can pull off one big mission to redeem their reputation. Anthony Lockwood jumps right into things; Lucy is brilliant but doesn’t always follow the rules and George believes in good solid research (I have to approve of that!).

I was given an ARC of Lockwood and Co.: The Screaming Staircase, by Jonathan Stroud – it won’t be published until September this year and is the first in a series. I will definitely be buying it for the library when it comes out –  it’s a very readable story, with likeable main characters (even George grows on you after a while) – and my copy has an app augmented cover with real ghosts and Jonathan Stroud talking about the book, which is just brilliant!