★★★★☆ Lucy to the fore

The Hollow Boy

Jonathan Stroud

The Lockwood agency consists of three agents: Anthony Lockwood, George Cubbins, and our first-person narrator Lucy Carlyle. It has been obvious from the beginning of the series that Lucy has a bit of a crush on Lockwood -- because she's the narrator, we hear her thoughts about Lockwood's handsomeness and dashing appearance first-hand. (This is in contrast with poor George, who is always presented as a bit grubby and icky, even though his intelligence as an analyst is behind much of the agency's success.)

As The Hollow Boy begins, there is a massive outbreak of psychic nastiness in Chelsea. DEPRAC (that's Department of Psychic Research and Control, the government organization charged with dealing with ghosts) is quite unable to control it, and has hired hundreds of agents from private psychic control agencies to deal with Chelsea. They are making no progress at all -- the problem is that no one has a clue what the cause of the outbreak might be.

The Lockwood Agency is not among those DEPRAC has hired. Thus it is one of the few agencies free to take on the ordinary psychic problems of London. Consequently the Lockwood Agency has more business than it can handle. Lucy is nonplussed when Lockwood hires an assistant, Holly Munro, to take on some of the load. Holly is super-efficient -- she is also quite pretty. Lockwood and George of course adore her -- Lucy on the other hand resents her.

Thanks to George, the Lockwood Agency takes on the Chelsea outbreak. And because of the resentment between Holly and Lucy, they are not of one mind when they do. This has ramifications, which I will not spoil.

In The Hollow Boy the Lockwood & Co series takes two big steps. One is an expansion from a small self-contained group of three agents to an organization of consequence in London. The second is, eventually, increased self-awareness on Lucy's part. I liked both of these-- they made me feel that Jonathan Stroud has a destination in mind for the series. I look forward to seeing how it pans out in subsequent books.

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