There were several things that really stuck out to me in Floating Staircase.
The first, as I mentioned and Ronald confirmed, is that is a nice companion piece to The Ascent. In The Ascent, the character (sorry, I forget his name) thinks his dead wife is haunting him at certain points in his life, but he's really not sure. In Floating Staircase, Travis Glasgow actually sees the figure of a small boy in the shadows of his house, hears doors opening and closing, and witnesses other evidence of the haunting. The thing about Travis is he's not sure if it's the boy who drowned in the lake behind the house or his dead brother, whom he feels he killed when they were children. The two hauntings tend to blend in Travis' mind.
Travis is an author. There are a lot of stories about characters who are authors moving into haunted houses, and a lot of times the fact they're authors is really played up. Ronald doesn't let you forget Travis is an author, but not in a way that feels like he's beating you over the head with it. It feels more natural than that, with nice little touches here and there. For example, while watching the police investigate a crime scene, Travis watches them and realizes he's always written those scenes in his books wrong from an emotional point of view.
The relationship between Travis and his wife Jodie feels completely natural. Too often, the spouse has a tendency to overreacting, but you don't see that here. Jodie experiences a small fraction of what Travis does, but she's coming at it from a more rational direction than Travis. When she does move out of the house because of Travis' behavior, it feels more like "I can't live with you while you're scaring me like this but I love you" as opposed to the usual "you're a sick person and I just can't live with that and this separation feels totally forced because I didn't express any of these feelings until I left."
I also like that Travis makes mistakes while he's investigating the death of the boy. He does some things he knows is wrong, or at least morally fuzzy, but the desire to learn the truth is too much for him. And, as his police officer brother Adam points out, sometimes you wonder if Travis is doing this for the boy or to ease his own guilt about the death of his brother.
The police officers in the book don't feel like stock characters. You don't learn much about them beyond Adam and the police chief, but they feel more like real people than the cookie cutter cops from any other book or tv show.
The story about Travis and his brother is told in flashbacks throughout the book. I know a lot of people don't like flashbacks, but here they're excellently placed and don't hurt the flow of the story, but enhance it. Another nice touch is that, though the guilt from his brother's death weighs heavily on Travis, it takes Adam to point out that all of Travis' books are about his brother's death. He's so invested in the guilt that he can't see the obvious.
One thing I did figure out was one of the secrets of David and Veronica Dentman, who were uncle and mother to the dead boy. David's last line in the book pretty much confirmed it for me, but guessing it really didn't affect my enjoyment of the story.
I really dug Floating Staircase and I hope everyone else gives it a try. Thanks for a wonderful book.
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