The Spook's Curse

The Spook's Curse is a novel by the English writer Joseph Delaney, published by The Bodley Head in 2005. It is the second book in the series about the Spook and the apprentice he is training.

Thomas Ward is the apprentice, and his trade is one that most people in the county prefer to pretend does not exist. He and his master travel between farms and villages dealing with the things that trouble them: ghosts that will not settle, boggarts in the barns and witches whose grudges outlast their deaths. Priestown is unfinished business for the Spook, because something in its catacombs has beaten him before and is still there. Into that situation comes the Quisitor, an inquisitor who has decided to hunt down anyone who meddles with the dark, and who regards the Spook and his apprentice as exactly the kind of people he is looking for.

The novel keeps to Thomas's point of view, so the reader learns the rules of the trade as an apprentice does: which creatures can be bargained with, which have to be bound, and which are simply stronger than the person dealing with them.