Excessive details hamper ghost story

Everyone likes a good ghost story, and, at its best, Kate Morton’s “The Clockmaker’s Daughter” is exactly that.

The author of “The Lake House” and “The Distant Hours” has assembled all the familiar trappings: the titular character’s death under mysterious circumstances; a delightfully haunted house; and, of course, the present-day saps who decide they’d better get to the bottom of it all.

Morton weaves an elaborate tapestry , but that isn’t necessarily a good thing here. Her story devolves into an increasingly tedious, convoluted affair.

Morton does, at least, get off to a strong start with the introduction of Elodie, our present-day heroine. The archivist and the daughter of a famous, deceased cellist is engaged to Alastair, a controlling mama’s boy who is easy to dislike.

At work one day, Elodie discovers an old leather satchel containing the sketchbook of Victorian painter Edward Radcliffe.

One sketch of a house reminds her of a story her mother told her as a girl. Another features a beautiful, nameless young woman wearing a famed pendant called the Radcliffe Blue.

This sends Elodie on a journey to Birchwood Manor, an estate on the Upper Thames, where we hope she will uncover a mystery about her mother — as well as the story of the nameless girl — in time to extricate herself from what promises to be a godawful marriage.

At the same time, we follow the first-person story of our ghost, a young girl in mid-19th-century London whose father has sent her to live in a house of petty • “The Clockmaker’s Daughter” (Pan Macmillan, 496 pages, $28) by Kate Morton

thieves while he makes a life for the two of them in America.

There, she masters the art of pickpocketing and meets — and falls for — Edward Radcliffe.

Morton is at her best when there’s palpable suspense to sink her teeth into, as when our pickpocket gets caught in the act:

“Over the years I had prepared myself for this precise scenario. I had been through it many times in my head. I should have feigned innocence, widened my eyes and pretended that it was all a mistake, perhaps even produced some pitiable tears. But I was caught unawares. ... Against this lady with her fancy hat, fine manners, and wounded delicacy, I was nothing.”

But as soon as we feel anchored in these parallel narratives, Morton diverts our attention to an excessive cast of characters who have frequented Birchwood Manor during the past century.

Several chapters go by without a mention of our main protagonists, and new central characters continue materializing past the halfway mark, at which point it would be nice to simply settle in to see what happens to those we’ve already come to know.