The Case of the Green-Dressed Ghost

by Lucy Banks

Overview

"Banks’s debut marks the start of a promising urban fantasy series, something like Ghostbusters with a British accent." - Publisher's Weekly

Kester Lanner didn’t know what to expect when he followed his mother’s dying request to contact the mysterious Dr. Ribero, but he wasn’t expecting to find his long lost father. Nor was he expecting to join the family business: catching supernatural spirits.

Kester is intrigued despite his fear, and finds himself drawn into an ancient ghost story that will test the entire agency.He soon becomes enmeshed in a struggle with the spirit, who is so malevolent and haunting that his first real case might just be his last.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781944995126
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Series:	Dr Ribero's Agency of the Supernatural , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	284
Sales rank:	948,782
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Lucy Banks grew up in provincial Hertfordshire, before fleeing to the wilds of Devon, where she now lives with her husband and two boys. As a child, she spent a disproportionate amount of time lurking in libraries, and prowling car-boot sales to feed both her hunger for books and her book collection. It's fair to say that she's bypassed being a bookworm, and become a book-python instead. Today, most of the available space in her house is stuffed to the brim with literature, which is just the way she likes it.

Regular forays into fictional realms at a young age created a desire for more, and she soon began to create alternate realities through writing. After teaching English Literature to teens, she set up her own copywriting company and turned her love for the written word into a full-time career. However, the desire to create never went away, so Lucy turned her insomnia into a useful tool—penning her novels in the wee small hours of the night and the stolen moments of the day.

Editorial Reviews

01/09/2017
Banks’s debut marks the start of a promising urban fantasy series, something like Ghostbusters with a British accent. Kester Lanner was raised by his mother and only discovers after her death that his father is alive and eager to welcome him into the family business in Exeter: Dr. Ribero’s Agency of the Supernatural. A job as a spirit-hunting investigator doesn’t exactly thrill this nervous academic, who prefers “the predictable, the reliable, and the well-established.” Despite his misgivings, 22-year-old Kester joins the firm and soon discovers that he has a rare skill that could help give the company the edge it needs over the competition. The real challenge comes with a dangerous case dealing with a haunted painting of a mysterious lady in green that charms every man who sees it. Banks introduces all the necessary background of a series launch, including Kester’s uneasy relationships with his new job, the father he never knew he had, and coworkers who aren’t sure how much they can trust him, as well as a supernatural landscape that mixes folklore, legend, and deadly reality. Contemporary fantasy fans hungry for a new angle will enjoy this one. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Ghosts and ghost hunters are a well-kept secret in the England presented in Banks’ first novel, the start to the Dr. Ribero’s Agency of the Supernatural series. Kester Lanner, our protagonist, discovers the Agency after his mother sends him to find Dr. Ribero. Lanner is quickly found out to have a special and rare gift: he can open doors into the spirit world. When the agency catches a dangerous and important mission, they insist on taking Lanner along to help. The case proves tricky as the ghost has ingrained herself into her portrait, and to remove her from the house, they must pull her out and put her in the storage container. The team interacts with a few spirits in the book, but none of the missions are scary. The story lacks the atmosphere of a truly terrifying haunting, but the mystery itself and the members of the agency are fun and compelling. This is a cozy haunting story, instead of a poltergeist-filled destination tale." — Emily Whitmore

- - Booklist

From the Publisher

"Ghosts and ghost hunters are a well-kept secret in the England presented in Banks’ first novel, the start to the Dr. Ribero’s Agency of the Supernatural series. Kester Lanner, our protagonist, discovers the Agency after his mother sends him to find Dr. Ribero. Lanner is quickly found out to have a special and rare gift: he can open doors into the spirit world. When the agency catches a dangerous and important mission, they insist on taking Lanner along to help. The case proves tricky as the ghost has ingrained herself into her portrait, and to remove her from the house, they must pull her out and put her in the storage container. The team interacts with a few spirits in the book, but none of the missions are scary. The story lacks the atmosphere of a truly terrifying haunting, but the mystery itself and the members of the agency are fun and compelling. This is a cozy haunting story, instead of a poltergeist-filled destination tale." — Emily Whitmore

Booklist

01/01/2017
Kester Lanner is a shy, quiet introvert who aspires to nothing more than to live an ordinary life with his indulgent mother. But the safety and security that he has always known is stripped away when his mother succumbs to cancer, and on her deathbed asks him to find his long-lost father, Dr. Ribero. Finding Dr. Ribero isn't hard, but what else Kester discovers has him terrified to stay. His father and his eclectic associates run the Agency of the Supernatural, catching spirits and sprites in recycled water bottles and banishing bloodthirsty ghosts through homemade gadgets. Kester is a self-described coward but can't help coming back to Dr. Ribero to learn more about his mother's hidden past with the agency. As with many debut series, this worthwhile launch has a lot of ground to cover in introducing this paranormal agency and its investigators, but readers will forgive its initial slow pace and eagerly anticipate the second volume. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in modern-day ghost stories or edgier cozy mysteries.—Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL

Library Journal