Lockwood & Co. The Screaming Staircase

The book that I'm recommending is Lockwood & Co. The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud. (He's my favorite author! Yay!)

Lucy Carlyle, a teenager in modern day London, can hear ghosts and paranormal echoes from the past. Now, you might read that and think, “Oh, she must be so special, then!” Well, you’re slightly wrong on that account. A lot of people have Talents, in fact. And the only people who can properly use them are, guess what? Kids. And teenagers, you get it. Anyways, those Talents of theirs are rather useful, considering the fact that ghosts of all kinds are roaming the street, forever bound to their Source and their everlasting craving for some sort of contact with living beings, whether it be for revenge or finding something lost.

This epidemic, or literally “The Problem”, is tackled by several different agencies, including the up-and-coming Rotwell agency, the snooty Fittes, and several others of a slightly lower rank. In the end, the goal is always the same for all agencies: Find the Source, contain it, and destroy it for the safety of the public. However effective it may be however, there is a corruption that lies under it, and some reasons for that corruption are different then others.

Enter Lockwood & Co., the smallest agency in London, and the only one to be run by teenagers, much to the Department of Psychic Research And Containment's, aka DEPRAC'S, annoyance. It consists of charismatic and mysterious Anthony Lockwood and his pudgy, sarcastic assistant George Cubbins. Lucy decides to take a shot at an interview with them, (she was turned down by the other companies,) and the duo accepts her as a new agent. Together they attempt to solve the mystery of Annabel Ward: an ancient corpse found behind an old chimney breast before a disastrous end to a simple case.


This book is literally one of the best books that I have ever read. The pace is perfect, and the ghosts are terrifying. The dark humor is spot-on, and the overlying mysteries about the Problem and Lockwood's past is always underlying the story. 

It can be a bit complicated at times, though. Not in a bad way, but enough to have you trying to remember the part where they mentioned an important bit of information, and it will turn out that that part was 6 (very long) chapters ago.

I give it 5/5 stars!