HOME IS WHERE YOUR FEET ARE STANDING

When Colin Daniel--also known as The Yahoo and Noise and hyperactive--gets angry, what he fondly calls bloody hell is likely to break loose. But enough is enough, and soon mother Sara realizes that his rages don't logically account for all the broken vases and Swansea plates that have been crashing lately. Her research in the Bishop's Twitchen village library leads Colin Daniel to believe that he's got a fatal disease called ""poltergeist"" and inspires some extracurricular haunting by third parties who have motives of their own. First there's Mrs. Marley who's afraid that Sara has designs on her nice employer Mr. Hawkins, then Colin's sisters Megan and Olwen (collectively known as the Megowlies) decide that a ghost would be the perfect excuse to go back to America where they can go to school with boys again. Of course some manifestations can't be attributed to Mrs. Marley or the gifts or Colin Daniel's poltergeist, even by the reader who knows what everyone would have said to everyone else if only they had said it. The frenzy is exhilarating as we're shuttled back and forth among Colin Daniel's inner turmoil, the dotty little tricks of the locals and the Machiavellian Megowlies. So it's a thudding disappointment when the confusion is resolved by the last minute entrance of one Chris Dred (what a name!) who offers Sara love-at-first-sight and a strong male presence to keep Colin Daniel, and presumably the ghost, in hand. Colin D. is no . . . Baker D. but the contrast between his grubby psyche and the archness of the Bishop Twitchenites is intriguing, if only we could exorcise the suspicion that, for Windsor, the end is where you happen to be when you run out of complications.