A Good Day for Haunting

This is the third in Arnold’s series of ghostly encounters between this world and the ghostly parallel that hides alongside it, and it’s in this book that the barriers between two worlds start to break down. This collision presents a problem for Tom Golden who has maintained a secret friendship with Grey Arthur and a number of his fellow spooks since The Invisible Friend, the first in the series.

While the other titles in this series are well worth a look, the reader could dive straight into this volume, where we encounter a world that both interlocks with our own and explains some of its features – such as why laundry has an irritating way of vanishing or the reason you can never find a biro when you need one. It’s all down to ghosts, and these books make much of their cleverly devised interface between two worlds, with comic moments such as ancient spirits meeting reality television.

Humour also moves the plot forward. While there are some good jokes along the way, much of the fun lies in the very dilemmas Tom faces as he tries to manage the absurd characters that populate the nether-world. This book actually risks being over full with characters but because they are all so clearly defined, and supported by a ‘ghostly glossary’ for an appendix, we differentiate our ‘Woeful William’ from our ‘Essay Dave’.

Over-population of the tale does contribute to the length of the book. Like many series titles these books grow as they appear, and in places in this volume the story takes a bit too long moving the action forward. That said, it’s a good laugh and a good story with great characters.