Review - Poltergeist (Greywalker, Book 2) by Kat Richardson (4/5 stars)

This is the second book in the Greywalker series.  Book 3 "Underground" and book 4 "Vanished" are already out.  The fifth book "Labyrinth" is due out in August 2010.  Right now there are six books contracted for this series.  This book was a great addition to the series.  I listened to this on audio book and the audio book was very well done.

Harper Blaine is starting to get better at this Greywalker thing.  Then she gets a call from a psychologist who is running a study with a group of people who are supposed to be using their mental energy to create a Poltergeist.  Well the group has either created or summoned something and things are starting to get violent during their seances.  The psychologist is convinced that someone in the group is faking the effects and wants Harper to find out who it is. When one of the group members either dies or is murdered the stakes are increased and Harper has to figure out if the happenings are paranormal, normal, or a combination of both.

I really like Harper Blaine as a character.  She is definitely not a bad-ass but she is smart.   She approaches her cases with a very analytical mind, sets up great plans to solve her cases, and is very practical about it all.  Mira and Ben as the couple that assist Harper with paranormal knowledge are great, and their little two year old boy Brian had me chuckling at his antics a number of times (maybe this is because I have a three year old son).  I liked Brian's crazy two-year old stunts and thought they added some humor to the book.

This book is definitely more of a paranormal mystery than any other genre; Harper doesn't really have a love interest in this book and Harper assumes mundane causes before fantastical causes.  A lot of time in this book is spent going into technical details on how ghost phenomena can be faked.  Another large chunk of time is spend going into technical detail on how the Grey works.  I really enjoyed the technical discussions; Richardson has done her home work and I found a lot of the information around the faking of ghost phenomena to be very interesting.  This is a warning to people who don't like this kind of stuff though; if you aren't interested in hearing all the intricate details behind the workings of things then this book might not be for you.

I really loved how Richardson has expanded Harper's working with the Grey.  I still enjoy the creativity behind the idea of the Grey and the idea of Harper being able to travel through layers of ghostly time is really interesting and adds a whole additional layer to the story.  The story was very engaging, action packed and the writing very readable.

My only complaint with this book was that Harper only had the one case to work on and, at times, her foot work on that case got a bit boring.  It would have been nice to have Harper juggling a couple cases, as she did in the first book, to keep things interesting during the inevitable lulls in the one case. 

I enjoyed this book and look forward to listening to the next book of the series on audio book.  If you like paranormal mystery that pays special attention to detail when explaining the workings behind the paranormal phenomena then I think you will really love this book.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
- The 100+ Book Reading Challenge