Child Ghost Hunters

 The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud 

This was well written and engaging. The three main characters were fairly well developed, but not all to the same extent. This is about children who are ghost hunters. Lucy is the narrator, but Anthony is the main character. I know they are children, but Anthony is hard to like. He does not communicate well, he keeps his colleagues in the dark, and thinks he's smarter than everyone else. I do not like any of those characteristics in any main character. Plus, he makes a mistake during the first job they go on and he blames it on Lucy. She was not responsible for his stuff! So, on that job they find the skeleton of Annie Ward, who was haunting the house. But she was very aggressive and they ended up burning down part of the house during the job. But, not before Lucy grabbed her locket. Well, turns out the locket was really the item holding her to the world and not her skeleton. They end up getting sued because of the fire, but they also get a lot of publicity because of Annie's ghost and unsolved murder. A rich, eccentric old man shows up and says he will pay off their debt and give them double their regular salary if they can take care of his super haunted house. While they are researching for the job their house gets broken into but nothing is stolen. They go on the job and Anthony is acting super weird, keeping secrets. The house is really haunted and it manifests in multiple ways. They are able to deal with the source of the haunting. But, they also get trapped by the old man who, as it turns out, is the real killer of Annie. He has his driver hold them at gun point while he monologues and then asks where the locket is. Lucy is wearing it and she takes it out of it's protection and sets Annie's ghost on the old man. This kills the old man and sets Annie free. They get their debt paid and get their salary and go home to celebrate. Lucy goes down to the basement to get refills and the skull in a jar that George keeps to experiment on starts talking to her. She nopes right back upstairs and the book ends with them getting called to deal with a new haunting.  This had a good pace and was consistent. I was engaged and entertained and will read the next book at some point.