Greywalker, by Kat Richardson

Kat Richardson’s debut novel Greywalker is a rare beast: a female-oriented fantasy/horror story without a single kinky sex scene. There’s a minor romantic subplot (and the heroine encounters a few alternate romantic possibilities), but Richardson seems much more interested in her cloudy Seattle setting, her levelheaded P.I. heroine, and her tense, action-packed plot.

The heroine of Greywalker is a young private investigator named Harper Blaine. As the story begins, Harper is slowly recovering from an assault that left her clinically dead for two minutes. Struggling to regain her health, Harper is unhappy to discover that her recent brush with the afterlife has left her with the ability to see some very weird stuff. Otherworldly figures are suddenly coming at her from all sides, and even her job is affected—two seemingly ordinary cases (a missing college student and a long-lost heirloom) turn out to have supernatural underpinnings.

Richardson’s use of the city of Seattle is particularly impressive. Unlike Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, which featured a rather cartoonish Washington setting (daily rains of biblical proportions = ideal vampire real estate!), Richardson uses Seattle landmarks like the downtown library, the U District, and Pioneer Square to effectively enhance her book’s gloomy urban atmosphere.

Ms. Richardson is under contract to produce at least two more books, and Greywalker’s healthy sales mean that the series may continue well beyond that. We sincerely hope so—after all, we see a lot of women’s supernatural/horror titles here at Wordcandy, and a book like Greywalker is a refreshing change from your average Laurell K. Hamilton-inspired sex’n’angst fest.