Night of the Living Zed

In this sequel to The Fabulous Zed Watson!, Zed and Gabe are preparing for their usual over-the-top Halloween festivities when they learn of a contest promising untold riches to anyone who spends two nights in a haunted house. They soon learn that the house was built by a famous opera set designer named Charlotte Scherrer in the early twentieth century, and that the house is full of rooms from which they have to escape by solving mysteries while being chased by ghosts and dealing with the perils of a crumbling building. As they solve the mysteries, a portrait emerges of the doomed love of Charlotte for her business partner Frances, a magician and set design engineer. Joined by Charlotte’s descendant Hyacinth, they discover the house’s treasure, a magical greenhouse and fountain set up by Charlotte to provide a refuge for the pair as Frances was dying. To honour Charlotte and Frances’ legacy, Zed and Gabe use the greenhouse for the wedding of Gabe’s sister Sam and her girlfriend Jo.

Zed, a non-binary character, is irrepressible, with stubbornly particular interests and a fierce attachment to romance and adventure, and provides very over-the-top narration to a story that is full of surprises and unexpected twists. The use of the in-joke catchphrase “encore” between Zed and Gabe to create an obligation for one to follow the preference of the other is hilarious. Zed is dedicated to celebrating love and is drawn to both Sam and Jo’s and Charlotte and Frances’ relationships and the contrast in acceptance in their respective historical eras. While Sam and Jo are depicted as a typical busy modern young couple, the book’s depiction of Charlotte and Frances, struggling with keeping their love secret and with Frances’ illness, is revealed through touching moments recreated through rooms filled with their photos, letters, and opera maquettes. The single-place bench next to the fountain, revealed as a place for Charlotte to sit with Frances nearby in her wheelchair, is a particularly strong symbol.

The adventure and mystery, though, is not quite as well played. The clues left by Charlotte—never solved before—are so obscure as to make the reader wonder how Zed and Gabe can figure them out while the reader is left struggling to understand, for example, how photos, letters, and room setups speak to the women’s doomed relationship. The novel moves fast and is full of perilous escapes and chilling ghost sightings, but details occasionally do not add up. A series of photos left on the wall of one room are set by the duo on pedestals on the mantel which then appear to recess into the shelf for some unknown reason. Their time in a cellar filled with fire set by flaming swords is much too long, giving them time to solve several puzzles before they finally escape the deadly smoke-filled enclosed space, leaving Hyacinth behind, who survives when the cellar is flooded and the flames are doused (which would have created more smoke).

Even the more practical matters of a house designed to appear haunted are confusing. The descriptions of the contest vary—some mentioning escaping from rooms, others solving puzzles, and others just staying two nights in the mansion. No mention is made of how they are to eat for three days, until a grand dinner is served on the second day. The ghostly appearances are suggested as machinations by Hyacinth and her mother, the caretaker of the property, following an old set of instructions of which they do not know the significance. In one case, Hyacinth somehow adjusts an old player-piano without realizing that it is meant to play a tune on its own, thereby scaring would-be contestants. She describes having to act scary in front of a spotlight in a closet at a specific time but does not seem to understand what that might be for. Even Hyacinth agreeing to partner with Zed and Gabe to finally solve the mysteries seems improbable, given their blind adherence to Charlotte’s instructions.

As a modern depiction of characters who are diverse in gender identity and sexual orientation, Night of the Living Zed breaks new ground and would be an important addition to any collection. But there is a decided divide between the middle-grade orientation of the haunted house adventure and the more mature orientation of the tragic love backstory. The book’s thematic significance is so heavily carried by a story of love between adults that its appeal to young readers is diminished. In particular, a reference to Charlotte and Frances being “spinsters” not in the common sense of unmarried women, but as women hiding a gay relationship, seems slightly out of place. At an even deeper level, the book may suggest that only a gender-non-conforming youth like Zed would be capable of deducing the real nature of their relationship or that Frances, while dressing as a man (Francis) for acting purposes, might also be a proto-transgendered person.

Nonetheless, it is Charlotte and Frances that elevate the depth of the story, and these layers of meaning culminate well in the realization that the house’s real treasure is not of the monetary kind (although in the end, gold bars are discovered in the fountain). The same applies to the wedding of Sam and Jo, set in a place that celebrated a lifelong love, and even to the decision to use the gold to finance needed repairs to the house. Educators, librarians, and parents may struggle with the right audience for the book, but young readers may surprise them all.