The Creeping Shadow

The Creeping Shadow is a novel by the English writer Jonathan Stroud, published in 2016 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. It is the fourth book in the Lockwood & Co. series.

The series is set in a London where the dead have become a practical problem: ghosts are dangerous, they are dealt with by agencies staffed mostly by children with psychic talent, and the work is competitive because the companies are paid by results. Lucy Carlyle is one of the best listeners in the trade, and she has been working on her own since leaving the agency she helped to make. Lockwood's business needs her, and a crime gives him a reason to approach her that does not require him to admit it, so the team is reassembled for an investigation that begins with an ordinary case and leads into a part of London society where money and old families protect the people who cause the trouble.

Stroud keeps the books narrated by Lucy, so the rivalries between the agencies and the details of the haunting trade are seen from inside one of its smallest companies.