Poltergeist (Greywalker Series #2)

Publishers Weekly

Richardson's clever ghost-busting follow-up to her solid urban fantasy debut (2006's Greywalker) finds psychic Seattle PI Harper Blaine investigating a deadly lab-made spook. Pacific Northwest University professor and psychologist Gartner Tuckman is trying to replicate the results of an actual '70s Canadian psychokinesis experiment by the Owen group, whose participants appeared to create a poltergeist. Tuckman's assistant, Mark Lupoldi, provides fake phenomena to encourage the subjects' belief in their psychic abilities, but soon the experiment begins producing off-the-charts evidence of an actual specter. Tuckman suspects a participant of meddling with the results and hires Blaine to investigate. When Lupoldi is murdered, Blaine consults a number of experts, including a former vampire client, before slipping into the Grey spirit world to track the thought-entity who might be responsible. Richardson's view of the paranormal has a nice technological twist and features intriguing historical notes that lift this whodunit a cut above the average supernatural thriller. (Aug.)

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Library Journal

Since her return from a brief clinical death, private investigator Harper Blaine has become a Greywalker, able to travel between the world of the living and the paranormal, or "other," world. Hired by a professor to investigate the efforts of a group of students trying to create a poltergeist to determine whether someone is faking the supernatural effects they seem to have witnessed, Harper discovers instead that they have connected with something very real. Then a student dies, apparently a homicide victim, and the Greywalker must determine whether the killer is human or something from beyond the physical world. Richardson's second supernatural mystery featuring PI Harper Blaine (after Greywalker) presents an intriguing mystery and a resourceful sleuth who grows stronger in her knowledge of her transformed self. A good addition to fantasy and mystery collections; for fans of urban fantasy and paranormal mysteries.

—Jackie Cassada

Kirkus Reviews

Contemporary urban-fantasy noir, the second case (Greywalker, 2006) for Richardson's Seattle-based psychic PI Harper Blaine. Following a near-death experience, Harper became a Greywalker, with the ability to see and enter a paranormal dimension inhabited by ghosts and other, much nastier things. This time out, Harper's client is creepy psychology professor Gartner Tuckman; he's set up a psychological experiment in which he claims to have artificially generated a poltergeist-at least, the experiment's group members believe they have. Tuckman helped their belief along by inserting his own operative, Mark Lupoldi, into the group's seances to produce table rappings and rockings and other poltergeist-like phenomena. And Tuckman admits that he selected the group members because their personalities would clash and strike sparks. However, the experiment's now out of hand, producing hauntings far above the scale predicted by Tuckman. And when Harper examines the room, she finds evidence of genuine paranormal energies. Then events take a sinister turn: Lupoldi turns up dead, brutally smashed against the wall of his apartment. With no apparent motive, Harper-barely distracted by Seattle PD detective Rey Solis, not to mention her own on-again, off-again boyfriend Will Novak, currently sidelined in London-investigates the group members, beginning with Tuckman himself. But what if the poltergeist is real, and as powerful and frenzied as it appears? Harper will need all her wits and the expert assistance of high-ranking, intimidating vampire Carlos to crack the case. A plodding installment, with no significant plot or narrative tension, and little attempt to probe the further mysteries of theparanormal.