The Whispering Skull
core novel 2014 Lockwood & Co
Record
| First published | 2014 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.33 (45,589 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 435 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781423194620 |
| Internal chronology | 2 |
Synopsis
The Whispering Skull, the second book in Jonathan Stroud's series, picks up six months after Lockwood & Co.'s first big case, with London's rival agencies watching closely as the trio tries to build its reputation. A public rivalry with the prestigious Fittes Agency escalates into a wager whose loser must admit defeat in the newspapers, raising the stakes on every job. Anthony Lockwood, Lucy Carlyle, and George Cubbins take a seemingly routine assignment excavating the body of a man buried under suspicious circumstances, only for George to accidentally release a vengeful phantom and a uniquely dangerous relic buried alongside the corpse. When the relic is stolen, Scotland Yard's Inspector Barnes demands its swift recovery, forcing the team to track it through the criminal underworld before it can cause catastrophe, all while managing an eerie talking skull George had earlier taken from a rival agency.
Where it sits
- Universe: Lockwood & Co
- Series: Lockwood & Co core; position 2 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Jonathan Stroud
Notes
- From the series record (Lockwood & Co): A completed 5-book YA supernatural-fantasy sequence, separate from Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Sequence, following a small London ghost-hunting agency during a decades-long haunting epidemic.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Lockwood & Co: position 2 of 5: previous The Screaming Staircase (2013) · next The Hollow Boy (2015)
Sources
← Lockwood & Co dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.