Alejandro's Reviews > The Screaming Staircase

Who you gonna call…in London?


This is the first novel of the “Lockwood & Co.” book series



STREAMING STAIRCASE

I already knew about this book series before of the streaming TV adaptation by Netflix, but I didn’t start to read the book series until now.

I liked a lot the first season that it’s an adaptation of books 1 and 2. I think that maybe they aren’t sure to reach five seasons, so they merged two books into the first season, and I guess to reach three seasons at least for the entire series, also taking in account that the following books are thicker and therefore harder to adapt two novels in just one TV season.

So, since the book series is already finished and it isn’t so extensive, I think that it was a good idea to engage into the book series while the second season would come out, hopefully soon and hopefully that Netflix would adapt the entire saga and don’t get cancelled before.

From what I read in the first book, it was quite well adapted in the streaming TV series, so both formats are recommendable to engage.


THE PROBLEM

In London, there is a problem that they call… “The Problem” (they didn’t scratch their heads too much, mmh?) that since 50 years ago, ghost began to appear at night and if you are touched by them you die! Soon enough it was discovered that many children had talents to hear, watch and feel ghosts, but when they reached maturity, they lost those talents. Agencies are formed all around England to deal with The Problem, using kids as field agents and adults (usually former kids with talent) as supervisors.

It’s developed a vast arsenal of tools and weapons to deal with the ghosts, like iron chains, iron filings, iron swords, silver nets, salt bombs and magnesium incendiary explosives, where the key tactic to eliminate the ghosts is to find “The Source” some artifact left behind when they were alive and that they remained attached.

The private commercial agencies are supervised by a government agency called DEPRAC (Department of Psychical Research and Control).


GHOSTS ARE JOB FOR KIDS

“Lockwood & Co.” is an unique agency since it’s operated by teenagers without any adult supervision. The first book is told from the perspective of Lucy Carlyle, a teenage girl with the talent of hearing ghosts, but soon enough is discovered that she also can “feel” things while touching objects serving as Sources.

Lucy after having some troubles in her home town, she moved to London and got being hired by Anthony Lockwood (a little older than Lucy) and owner of “Lockwood & Co.” with the talent of seeing ghosts, where the third member of the agency is George Cubbins (also a little older than Lucy but a little younger than Lockwood) where he is expert in researching the necessary info about ghosts before engaging them.

In the first book, you’ll read about an early mission of Lucy and Lockwood where they caused a severe damage to a house and they are in the need to get soon a lot of money to pay the damages or the agency can be shut down by DEPRAC.

Therefore, Lockwood will accept a dangerous job in Combe Carey Hall (the most haunted house in England, that it possess that motto even before of the rising of The Problem!) where there is hidden a “Screaming Staircase” which it gives title to this first novel.

The setting of the saga is awesome, quite well established the rules of how this world works, the characters are well developed and you care for them, and certainly it’s totally recommended. Certainly I will read the rest of the saga, maybe not, one after another, but reading some other stuff in between, but I won't delay them too much.