Sunday, October 16, 2016

‘The Screaming Staircase’

Book cover: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud. Image depicts two teenagers, a boy and a girl, standing on a staircase and each holding a sword, their attention directed toward ominous dark vapor on the top of the staircase
With The Screaming Staircase (Disney-Hyperion, 2013) author Jonathan Stroud introduces young readers to an exciting adventure series set in a modern-day London that is beset by paranormal disturbances.

Young people with an ability to detect these supernatural entities are essential to psychic detection agencies that compete to combat London’s “Problem.”

In The Screaming Staircase, Lucy Carlyle becomes the newest recruit of Lockwood & Co., an agency staffed entirely by young people.

With agency founder Anthony Lockwood and researcher George Cubbins, Lucy investigates a mansion with a grisly reputation for multiple hauntings and deaths. She also attempts to solve a young woman’s decades-old murder.

This enjoyable first volume combined many of the ingredients I enjoyed in Stroud’s Bartimaeus books, including the first-hand observations of an engaging narrator. I recommend this book to young readers who like supernatural mysteries.

Disclosure of material connection: My taxes support my public library’s acquisition of this and other resources. I consider the access I enjoy to be a “priceless” return on my investment.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Robust debate and even unusual opinions are encouraged, but please stay on-topic and be respectful. Comments are subject to review for personal attacks or insults, discriminatory statements, hyperlinks not directly related to the discussion and commercial spam.