The Ghost Prison

The Ghost Prison

by Joseph Delaney

Greenwillow Books, 2013

112 Pages

Middle Grade (9-12)

The Wardstone Chronicles are coming to an end, and Joseph Delaney is branching out into new avenues of fear. The Ghost Prison was released this October in the US, and only a month ago in the UK– a satisfying change from the six month wait we usually have on this side of the puddle when one of his books comes out!

This is a tiny book; in fact, I bet if I got a word count, it’s more of an individually-packaged short story. (Yet, they are asking an outrageous $13 in hardcover.)

This is Delaney’s first US publication with a new illustrator, Scott M. Fischer. The illustrations are well-done. Patrick Arrasmith is a hard act to follow, but Fischer captures the mood in a lighthearted, but realistic way… especially those teeth in a pool of blood.

Billy Calder, who has lost his parents, is almost at the age where he will be released from the orphanage to fend for himself in the world. He finds a job at the local prison… and of course, being a haunted prison, Billy pulls the night shift. (Well, it was by request.) The place is crawling with all sorts of ghosts– and a “special prisoner” down in The Witch Well. Billy is told never to go down there. Never to go alone. Too many guards have already been lost, and only the most experienced jailers are allowed to feed the mystery prisoner.

Turns out that ’twasn’t luck brought Billy to the graveyard shift, it was a special request made by none other than Long-Neck Nellie… the ghost!

“Well, boy, this is a bad situation,” he told me. “That prisoner in the Witch Well has to be fed at midnight, and with no Adam here, you’ll have to do it.”

I loved the build up to the welcome ending. It wasn’t too slow, like one of those Godzilla movies from the 60s, but a growing frisson as Delaney introduces one article of fear after another, building to the final confrontation with the special prisoner. The story takes place in the same world as The Wardstone Chronicles, and contains many of the same supernatural elements and adheres to the same mythology. As a Halloween read, this one will not disappoint!