A bit of a story to go with this. I read it when I was about 15. My father had the Book of the Month Club edition. When I moved out on my own it passed from any sort of presence in my life, tho I did occasionally mention fond memories to friends. One such was apparently Carmela Merlo, wife of Roger Stern, who found a copy at a library book sale and sent it to me. Memory had not served me well! As I started to reread it I found only, well, ghosts of what I thought I recalled.

The story concerns Mr. Alexander Hero (an anglicizing of "Hereaux") who is a British ghost-buster -- tho not by choice. He longs for the day he will encounter a genuine haunting, but instead has spent his time debunking frauds. He is summoned to a country estate to investigate what seems to be a very boisterous poltergeist.

What is most interesting in this book written in the late Fifties, is that the physical description of Hero is an almost-perfect fit for Matt Smith.