Downpour-Kat Richardson

Downpour
Kat Richardson
Roc, Aug 2 2011, $24.95
ISBN: 9780451463982

Harper Blaine has died several times. Each time she enters the Big Sleep state lasts for a few minutes until she returns to the living changed to continue her life’s work as a shmo who protects the Grey fringe between the mortal and purebred paranormal realms. However shmo work of a Greywalker pays nothing monetarily as vamps are cheap and ghosts lost their funding to their heirs; subsequently feel good paranormal social work with the other side is not very financially rewarding; don’t ask about her love life. Harper makes a living as a Seattle private investigator mostly doing background checks.

Lawyer Nanette Grover hires Harper to do some pretrial investigation of a potential witness Daria Shea a handyman worker in the Lake Crescent area of the Peninsular. Completing her interview with the creepy Shea, Harper leaves only to see a burning car. She runs to free the driver, but her hand goes through the vehicle. The ghost showed her his fiery death and says it was no accident; his name is Steven. After taking care of Grover’s requirement that pays the bills, Harper makes inquiries into a Steven dying in a SUV fire and comes up with Steven Leung. As the Greywalker digs into the Leung death, she begins to fear something evil resides in Blood Lake Crescent protected by affluent magic practitioners.

The latest Greywalker urban fantasy is a fabulous paranormal private investigative thriller as the heroine makes inquiries into a potential homicide made to look like an accident (at least that is what the ghost claims) and background into a strange unsettling worker. The story line is fast-paced and filled with action as the heroine confronts ghosts, zombies, demons and a creature much darker and more powerful.

Harriet Klausner