The Spook's Apprentice

Well-packaged as horror, this is the kind of storytelling which will catch many readers – full of action with the threat of dark and dreadful deeds but always bound by the ties of family and friendship and the security of things coming right in the end. Thomas is the seventh son of a seventh son (with a mysteriously powerful mother too) now ready to be apprenticed as such children have to be apparently to the local Spook. He is a kind of policeman for the supernatural, sorting out those with dark intent and putting them behind bars, which may of course be bent and broken free from if young apprentices are tricked into doing what they shouldn’t. Once past his initial test (suffering a stay in a spooky house over night), Thomas is into his apprenticeship and has to learn how to copy the lessons of his master as well as dealing with the awful tricks of Mother Malkin on his own when the Spook is called away. There is much excitement, including the evil hand reaching out of the water to pull Thomas to his death, and the reappearance of the evil old woman in some other form – Alice, the lively daughter of the same bad family who must surely be tainted, or is it his newly born niece or even his brother? Much excitement. The writing is sometimes plain and creaks a bit but it’s a good story where creaking a bit is all part of the awful pleasure of spookery.