Embassy of the Dead – Hangman’s Crossing

Will Mabbitt's Embassy of the Dead - Hangman's Crossing is a funny ghost story for 9 year olds about a boy who has been given a job he never applied for.

What happens

Jake Green is still alive. He would quite like to stay that way.

A couple of months ago he found out he could see ghosts, and things got complicated fast. There was a stolen camper van, a fallen reaper called Fenris, and an Age of Evil that did not happen, largely because of Jake.

The Embassy of the Dead thanked him by making him an Undoer. That means helping stuck ghosts finish their business so they can move on. Nobody asked whether he wanted the job.

Now a postcard has arrived summoning him back, and Jake's plan is to leave it at the back of a drawer and think about something else.

This does not work, mainly because of Cora.

Cora is a ghost, about his age, permanently in her old school uniform with a hockey stick and a straw hat. She is bound to a small silver trophy that Jake carries around in his backpack, so she is never more than thirty yards away. She wants to go to the Embassy. She wants it a lot.

The best running joke in the book is that only Jake can see her. His best mate Sab sits right there missing everything. Cora feeds Jake the answer in a history lesson, then changes it at the last second so he says something ridiculous in front of the whole class. There is also a ghost fox called Zorro, who wanders in and wees under the whiteboard.

A warning about the opening, though. The book starts with a dead woman in a snowy alley, waiting for a contact who never comes. She remembers the plane crash that killed her, counting down the altimeter. Then three faceless grey shapes peel off the wall towards her. It is properly tense and it is nothing like the joking that follows, so a child who spooks easily may want company for the first few pages.

After that the fear is mostly the fun kind. Grim reapers, an Eternal Void, an Ambassador who has made it clear she hopes not to see Jake again until he is dead.

This is Jake's second adventure and the first one is not in the library, though the book explains what happened well enough to follow. Worth knowing too that it is written American, so your reader gets mom, soccer and homeroom.

What to read next

If they like a perfectly ordinary kid dragged into a secret organisation that handles ghosts, Too Ghoul For School does the same trick with a boy called Denzel, whose homework is interrupted by something coming out of the dining room wall.