Ghost Hotel

Ghost Hotel
by Arthur Slade
Published by Shadowpaw Press Reprise
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$14.99 ISBN 9781998273027

Ghost Hotel, the 2^nd novel in prolific writer Arthur Slade’s Canadian Chills Series, is a spooky send-up for young readers and—abracadabra—it’s just been re-released. If you’re already a Slade fan, you may remember Ghost Hotel. First published in 2004, Shadowpaw Press Reprise has resurrected it … and lucky you if you have yet to discover it. The tone of this supernatural, middle years’ mystery—featuring junior detective friends “Wart” and Cindy—is light-hearted. Though the youthful leads are wise-crackers and the story’s a hoot, the author’s a serious writer with mad skills: you don’t have over thirty novels published if you’re a dabbler.

Disclaimer: I know Arthur Slade. Back in the day, we wrote radio commercials in the same office. I read his first novel, Draugr, when it was still in manuscript form. I attended his wedding. As lovely as these things may be, they don’t matter as far as this review goes, for even if I was inclined to bolster a book on account of a long friendship, there’s no need to here: Slade’s books consistently win awards and fly off the shelves because he is simply a damn good writer. The Saskatoon author earned a Governor General’s Award for his novel Dust, and his name frequently appears on SK Book Award lists.

Ghost Hotel is a Saskatoon-based story concerning Archie (“dressed in a nerdy grey suit-and-tie outfit and a bowler hat that made him look like a mini-version of Charlie Chaplin”), a young ghost who appears to novice sleuths Wart (CEO of the Walter Biggar Bronson Ghost Detective and Time Travel Agency) and his sidekick, Cindy, at Victoria School, post-badminton match. Wart has a few special possessions that would make him the envy of any grade seven student, including a watch that glows “whenever a supernatural presence comes near,” and a cellphone that works even during time travel episodes. Wart comes by his curiosity honestly: his parents are “both mad scientists”. His father suffers from “alienphobia” and wears a tinfoil hat, and his mom, with a PhD in “psychic and supernatural sciences,” has been phobic about vampires “ever since she was attacked by Count Spokula” while the family was on holiday in Transylvania. Why Transylvania? “Cheap flights,” Wart explains.

Kids must love this book. It’s original, funny (the asides are terrific), fast-moving, and—the boy-ghost that leads Wart and Cindy to a 1936-version of the Delta Bessborough aside—Slade’s handling of language and characters is top-notch. The adults are wonderfully weird. There’s a magician whose face is “the colour and texture of mottled Swiss cheese;” a school principal obsessed with toy trains; and a “batty” librarian insists that “every child should read [The Wizard of Oz]”.

Slade takes a self-talking ventriloquist’s dummy (always frightening), loads of “ghost goo,” a time-travelling elevator, and a family’s untimely death in the wintery South Saskatchewan and puts them all—and much more—in the path of two adolescent detectives who are ready to kick some derriere.

Ghost Hotel: hard yes.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM