When the change occurred fifty years ago, the dead started to walk the Earth, only visible to the young. In response, agencies of young people sprung up to deal with the dead's intrusions, agencies like Lockwood & Co. George, Lucy and Lockwood maintain their small agency against the derision of the larger more formal organisations, slowly gaining a good reputation, even if most of their cases are haphazard and more likely than not to go wrong. When they are offered a job removing an apparition from London’s Kensal Green Cemetery, it seems like a straightforward proposition, little do they know that it will be the beginning of their most hazardous mission to date...

Lockwood & Co: The Whispering Skull (2014. 486 Pages) is the second book in the Lockwood series, by Jonathan Stroud, who also penned the Bartimaeus series. The book is a young adult novel.

The characters are pretty much designed so as to appeal to the widest audience. Lockwood is handsomely brooding, with secrets enough to keep a young girls heart fluttering, Lucy is the plucky, but slightly flawed female lead, who is growing ever more concerned about Lockwood’s secrets and George is inquisitive and scruffy. The book really belongs to Lockwood and Lucy, there is no hint of a romance and probably never should be as George, who already feels like a sidelined character would have to disappear.

Between the three of them they have a supportive, if a little fractious relationship, which allows a lot of banter and interplay. Each of them maintains a role in the company, Lockwood is the action hero, and Lucy the girl with increasing power to talk to ghosts and George is the obsessive researcher. Against this triumvirate, is set any number of ghouls, as well as rival companies.

Overall the book is well written but it does have a few problems as a standalone novel. Presumably the background and environment were explored in the first book, The Screaming Staircase, but if you have not read this, then sections of the novel feel confusing. The date is the biggest problem. Now, I’m willing to concede that ghosts, swords and generally mucking about in graveyards is reminiscent of a Victorian novel and until they encounter cars, there was nothing in the story to make me think otherwise.

All through the book I didn’t feel as if I had successful grounded the story into a particular era, other than the cars would mean a fairly modern date. Likewise we are told the big change, the day the dead started to return, happened fifty years from the time of the novel, but if you cannot work out when the novel is set this information just adds to the confusion.

That aside the interplay between the three main characters is witty, if not actually laugh out loud funny and even Kipp, their main rival from another agency, is provided with some light and shade. The acerbic skull of the title is one of the books better characters, as the long standing object of George’s experimentation.

Stroud provides enough pace and mystery to keep the whole thing humming along nicely and even introduces a few unresolved plot point which will probably become the basis of the next book. Overall a fun ride for its target audience.

7

Charles Packer