Poltergeist

After I blogged about M.L.N. Hanover’s Jayne Heller books (reviewed here) and Seanan McGuire’s October Daye novels (reviewed here), a few folks in the know suggested that I give Kat Richardson’s Greywalker urban fantasies a try. It was good advice: Richardson beautifully combines noir mystery with psychic craziness in her tales of Harper Blaine.

Blaine is a Seattle private investigator who is attacked in the course of a routine job; she dies from the savage beating she suffers, but her death lasts only two minutes before she is revived. As a result of her momentary death, however, she has gained an ability to see into the Grey – a world that is our own, but not entirely of this earth. The Grey is a place where ghosts live, and show more all times overlap the present. There are hungry creatures in the Grey, too, and Harper’s ignorance of what is going on there threatens to kill her again, this time permanently.

Greywalker, the first of the series, introduces the important series characters with panache. Harper first hires Quinton, a technology whiz who sets her up with a good security system in her office, and soon becomes indispensable for a number of other tasks. Then she meets up with Mara and Ben Danziger, who know a lot more about the Grey than she does, and are willing to teach her what they know. And then, of course, there are the unfriendly neighborhood vampires, and the ghost who lives in the Danziger’s house, and another ghost who hires Harper, and before she really knows what’s going on, she has acquired a new specialty in the paranormal.

Greywalker manages to introduce all these characters while spinning a genuine noir mystery as well. It’s as much a page-turner as any mystery I’ve ever read. Despite the fact that the set-up sounds, well, corny – I would have told you before I read this book that it wouldn’t be my sort of thing at all – Richardson keeps it as noir as a dark alley in 1940’s downtown Seattle. Her own skepticism about the Grey is probably what keeps this from falling into cuteness at any point, not to mention that Harper’s paranormal clients and enemies are genuinely scary. Richardson’s vampires don’t sparkle, and her ghosts have nothing in common with anything out of “Ghostbusters.” This is cold, harsh reality in a grim world that has more wrong with it than we could possibly know – unless we’d died for two minutes and awakened in the Grey.

Poltergeist, the second book in the series, was disappointing after Greywalker’s great start. The set-up is tied much more closely into real events, as a professor in a fictional Seattle university attempts to re-create the Philip project, an experiment actually conducted in the early 1970s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research in which a group of volunteers attempted to “create” a ghost – to use the power of their combined minds to imagine an entity and then attempt to call him up in conditions similar to those of a séance. The professor gets a lot more than he bargained for, and is convinced that someone is faking psychic phenomena. He calls in Harper to investigate and tell him who his troublemaker is. But Harper finds there is more going on than fakery, and worse: it isn’t long before someone is dead.

Richardson doesn’t seem to a handle on her plot and pacing in Poltergeist, as she did in Greywalker. The story takes a very long time to develop, especially after it becomes clear who the villain of the piece is. I was disappointed that, after a strong debut, Richardson fell into a classic sophomore slump.

Despite my disappointment, though, I’m looking forward to reading the remaining three Greywalker mysteries in print, Underground, Vanished and Labyrinth. Richardson has a solid heroine and a good concept going for her. I’m looking forward to seeing Harper become established and confident in her abilities in navigating the Grey, and am curious as to where Richardson will take her. show less

first line: "I sat in a boxlike office for twenty-three minutes as Professor Gartner Tuckman told me that he and a motley group of strangers had made a ghost."

While I think Richardson does a better job describing the supernatural in this book than she did in the first, it wasn't as engaging overall. I can't say exactly why, except that it felt much more like a mystery novel with paranormal aspects than it did an urban fantasy. Also, I'm not sure she handles the minority characters (some of whom seem stereotypical) and racial tensions as deftly as might be desired. Still, I have every intention of sticking with this series, the third installment of which is due to be published in 2008.

Book 2 of the Greywalker series is a fun paranormal mystery, and the characters in it have a lot of life to them. There's a bit of detachment to this POV character, so she is dispassionate in her evaluations of the individuals she encounters. Her romance is long distance, so there isn't much but a bit of angst and a couple of phone calls.

The classic noir detective "conniving client" scenario is fresh in this book due to the lively side characters and the flair of the author with the poltergeist plot. The series overall is on the dark side, and each book seems to have an impact on Harper's mental state, much like PTSD, so there is emotional realism along with the supernatural elements.

Poltergeist was a refreshing read and good enough that I'm rushing to find the sequel. The premise is interesting and the story and characters are reasonably engaging. The protagonist, Harper Blaine, a small-time PI in Seattle, died for two minutes and was revived with a strange power: she is able to see-sometimes inadvertently--into the Grey, the world of spirit and magic. She is pulled into a case where a poltergeist, created in a during an unusual sociology experiment, begins to go rogue and draws the other subjects into mystery and murder.

Blaine is an engaging character and a sympathetic narrator. She's a bit too wish-fulfillmentish for my taste--thin, tall, pretty, intelligent, full of special skills, and with several close and show more loyal friends--but YMMV. For all that, I liked her--she was the first strong female protagonist I've seen in a while whose brain is in charge rather than her hormones--although possibly only because her boyfriend is out of the country. In any case, it was refreshing for a female protagonist to have the love interest so firmly off-screen.

The one issue that seriously bothered me was what I saw as Richardson's incredibly simplistic treatment of racism. A black student gives Blaine attitude, and she tells him he has a chip on his shoulder, points out to him his own instinctual racism against her, and it's all magically better! The Chinese girl has stereotypical Asian parents. I'm not a racial minority, and even I know there is so much more complexity than is being shown here, and that the very superficiality of the portrait is offensive. The attempt of Richardson to "understand", then her dismissal of racial complexities, felt to me both patronising and obnoxious, even if well-intentioned. Otherwise, I was moderately engaged by the characters, especially Quinton, the tech nerd.

Despite its supernatural edge, the flow and pace of the story felt less like noir and more like golden age mystery--something by Sayers or Christie, perhaps. Standard noir typically has gangsters and gunfights galore. The noir PI doesn't detect so much as poke around until bullets start to fly. He (or she) is then catapulted from explosive scene after explosive scene, becoming increasingly embroiled in the politics of the dark underbelly of the city. Typically motives and methods, and even individual players, are not paramount--there are too many players with simple motives (power, money) and gangster guns behind them. The structure of Poltergeist, on the other hand, follows in the tradition of the whodunit. There is a mysterious death and a limited set of suspects. Blaine questions each one by one, trying to tease out motives and methods. Although danger escalates, there is plenty of time for exposition and conversation, and Blaine's main interest is the suspects rather than harrowing escapes and imminent doom. Perhaps the flow was a little choppy and slow, and despite some potentially dangerous circumstances, the story never made my pulse rise. I though Richardson's voice and tone fit the golden-age mystery style well. The most irritating thing to me was the constant repetition of the word "Grey" (capitalized). I'd guess that "Grey" pops up about 5 times or more each page. There needs to be a better way of describing things without the constant repetition of That Word. Although the characters are perhaps stereotypes, they still are potential suspects and therefore have inner motives and complexities.

I'll definitely be picking up the next book--I really enjoyed the mixture of cozy mystery and fantasy. Richardson also has a great deal of fun with the poltergeist, bringing in discussions of techniques for scams and mimicry, and even giving a shout-out to Dorothy L. Sayer's Strong Poison. How could I NOT love a book that does that? show less

Real rating 3.5 stars. Kat Richardson is hitting her stride as a writer, and I found I enjoyed this book more than her last book. Harper is a PI hired to find someone "undermining" a scientific experiment on creating a ghost. The psychologist hiring her doesn't know that Harper can actually see into the world of the paranormal. There's an interesting cast of side characters, from the college professor and witch who help her with her skills, to her mysterious friend Quinton to Phoebe, bookstore owner. The mystery underneath drives the story and kept me guessing. Although I enjoy urban fantasy, the ghost/paranormal is not my favorite area of interest, but I just skimmed some of the longer explanations of the paranormal world. The show more resolution was satisfying without being expected or entirely satisfactory for the heroine. Although Harper is new to the paranormal, she is trying to learn and understand more of how it works. I'll be looking for the next installment. show less

Since the story is from an investigator's POV we get a little education on effective illusion and all those technicalities that you hear being thrown in Ghost Hunters or other ghost tours? Yup Kat Richardson shared that background stuff with us too. And it's tight, all that EMF, telekinesis and the accompanying psycho babble was well researched and not some made up explanation to justify the story.

Harper Blaine is like my other favorite heroine, Mercy Thompson. She's driven, a strong female and doesn't take crap from anybody. The plot is not as complicated either. Compared to Greywalker, Poltergeist is focused and didn't have the other distractions of its predecessor. Here Harper is just tackling her investigation and mastering the show more Grey with the help of Ben and Mara Danziger. show less

Poltergeist is a good second installment in the Greywalker series. The world of the Grey is interesting and unique, yet it has a classic, dark, ghost story feel. The mystery is more complex than the typical urban fantasy, with a complex mixture of clues, motivations, and obstacles that Harper has to deal with. In fact, the plot is more like a crime novel with a strong paranormal flare. (Which reminds me, thank you for the reference to one of my favorite fictional detectives, Ms. Richardson. It made me smile.)

My only critique is that I guessed the culprit halfway through the book. Harper gains a piece of info about one of the suspects that screams “Psycho!” but she completely misses that vibe. Still, it was an entertaining read. The show more premise of Poltergeist is so fascinating that I felt compelled to find out more about the Philip experiments, the real life research into paranormal phenomena on which the story is based. In addition, I love the atmospheric Seattle setting and the little nuggets of history embedded in the story. The scenes with Carlos were also compelling; he’s one of those characters that falls into the grey area - please excuse the pun - between good and evil, and that ambiguity is what makes him the story’s most interesting character.

Overall, Poltergeist was a solid second book, and I’m greatly looking forward to reading the next Greywalker mystery. show less