Lockwood & Co series by Jonathan Stroud

Last month I needed mindless fluff so I pulled out an old standby, Jonathan Stroud’s “Lockwood and

Co.” novels.

In a world where ghosts have overrun the evening hours and only children can see them to defend themselves, Lucy Carlyle is an agent—one of the children who fight ghosts at night so that the rest of the world, including the adults who cannot protect themselves, can live safely.

Most agents operate under the supervision of large, adult run agencies, but Lucy is part of Lockwood and Co, comprising their charismatic seventeen-year-old leader, Anthony Lockwood, the research specialist, George Cubbins and eventually an assistant, Holly Munroe. As the team battles the ghosts that are swamping modern day England, they begin to pry into why the ghosts are multiplying, uncovering secrets that powerful people don’t want them to know.

If you’re not into horror, don’t worry, this isn’t it. There’s definitely quite a few ooooo creepy moments in the series of four books, but despite the ghosts and skeletons and grisly crimes, the general tone is actually quite lighthearted. The real focus is on the developing relationship between Lucy and Lockwood in particular, and their other friends as well. I did think that Lucy, who narrates, indulged in a little too much purple prose in the last book in particular—but maybe that was her character and not a fault of Stroud’s!