Excellent middle-grade fiction which delivers genuine chills. 4/5. 
 This review was originally posted on my book blog. 
 The Screaming Staircase is another book which backs up my belief that if a writer get their characters right then they can't go far wrong elsewhere. Handled badly, the kids of Lockwood & Co. could have come across as foolhardy, smug and annoying. Thankfully, Stroud knows what he's doing: the main characters are all adorable and you can't help but warm to them quickly. This meant the parts of the story where the stakes were high were truly frightening because I cared whether the heroes lived or died. I worried even though I knew this was the first book in a series, making it highly likely they'd all survive! 
 Fans of mysteries, ghost stories and junior sleuths will enjoy this immensely. That said, I would advise again letting very young children read this because the scary bits are properly scary (blood dripping from ceiling scary, for example). That said, it didn't give me nightmares, and just about anything can do that, so it's obviously not that bad. 
 I was confused about the time period the story is supposed to be set in. From the way people speak and the fact everyone's carrying rapiers, it feels almost Victorian. But then everyone has televisions and things are markedly modern day which suggests this is set in an alternative present... It's all a bit odd. 
 I managed to unpack the "whodunnit" element of the mystery half way through the book, which drained some of the tension from subsequent events and robbed me of the big reveal, but it's a testament to the book's strengths that I found it thoroughly entertaining nonetheless. 
 I look forward to reading the next books in the Lockwood & Co. series. 
 Overall: a great ghost story helmed by a group of likeable junior investigators. Give this a try - you won't be sorry!