The Whispering Skull
2014
- juvenile fiction / horror & ghost stories
- ghost stories
- paranormal fiction
- juvenile fiction / fantasy & magic
- juvenile fiction / mysteries & detective stories
- fiction
- psychic ability
- supernatural
- ghosts
- juvenile fiction
The story
In the six months since Anthony, Lucy, and George survived a night in the most haunted house in England, Lockwood & Co. hasn't made much progress. Quill Kipps and his team of Fittes agents keep swooping in on Lockwood's investigations. Finally, in a fit of anger, Anthony challenges his rival to a contest: the next time the two agencies compete on a job, the losing side will have to admit defeat in the Times newspaper. Things look up when a new client, Mr. Saunders, hires Lockwood & Co. to be present at the excavation of Edmund Bickerstaff, a Victorian doctor who reportedly tried to communicate with the dead. Saunders needs the coffin sealed with silver to prevent any supernatural trouble. All goes well-until George's curiosity attracts a horrible phantom. Back home at Portland Row, Lockwood accuses George of making too many careless mistakes. Lucy is distracted by urgent whispers coming from the skull in the ghost jar. Then the team is summoned to DEPRAC headquarters. Kipps is there too, much to Lockwood's annoyance. Bickerstaff's coffin was raided and a strange glass object buried with the corpse has vanished. Inspector Barnes believes the relic to be highly dangerous, and he wants it found.
What it’s like
Clipped, wry third-person prose with a quick, brisk momentum, the kind of voice that makes a grey London winter feel like a place you can step into. The world is built from rain on slate roofs, gaslit Victorian-era streets, the cold clatter of iron railings and the faint sulphurous hum of things that should stay dead, all rendered with brisk sensory detail rather than lingering description. The mood is cosy-spooky: a comfortable melancholy, mischief and banter threaded through genuinely creepy moments where the air goes cold and whispers pick at the edges of the room. Chapters move fast and often end on a small jolt, so it reads in long, unstoppable gulps. Its heroes are three teenagers who bicker, bluff and occasionally fall apart, and the arc is one of a fragile team learning to trust one another and to face their fears together. Ghost violence is present and sometimes vivid, with frightening creatures and tense fights, but it is brief and bloodless rather than gory, and there is no sexual content. Best suited to readers who want a spooky, witty adventure for a rainy weekend, or who enjoy young-adult ghost stories with a sharp sense of humour.
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