Greywalker by Kat Richardson

Harper Blaine is a Private Eye, but when a job goes bad and the man she's chasing turns on her with his fists, he's able to give her quite a beating- and she wakes up in the hospital, not knowing how she got there or what happened to her.

It's only quite a bit later that she discovers that she died for two minutes. Harper is shocked and stunned by the news, but she also discovers that with it came a new problem- from the corner of her eyes, she can see things that can't really exist or be there... can she? Her vision seems sheeted by grayness, with things moving in it. Things nobody but her can see.

Tense and frightened with the things she sees, she asks her Doctor, but he says there is nothing wrong with her vision- or the medication she's taking. But he does give her the name of two people who might understand what she's going through- Ben Danzinger, a philosophy Professor, and his wife Mara, a Geology Professor and witch. Harper Blaine has become a greywalker, one who can see into death- into another world. And though she wants to return to her own particular value of "normal", Harper will never really be normal again- not as she defines it anyway.

As she struggles to understand and adapt to her new powers, she also has two new cases that will benefit from her vision into the Grey- one an Eastern European man who is strangely insistent about finding a specific organ lost in a shipwreck back in the 60's, and the other a missing college student who might just have been turned into a vampire.

But when she finds the organ, she may need the help of the vampires to destroy it, because it has been used to power the very darkest of magics: necromancy. But will the effort to destroy the organ and dissipate the energy of death it has built up inside it kill her and her friends, and all those in the city of Seattle? Or will she somehow, somehow be able to make it out intact?

I enjoyed this book alot, and I could really identify with Harper when she freaks out at all of the really freaky stuff happening to her. If I was in that position, I'd be freaking out, too! More to the point, I admired Harper. She doesn't whine and cry about what happened to her, she just sits down and deals with it. Not always well, and she does freak out from time to time, but she doesn't allow it to paralyze her.

I liked learning about the Grey, not just from Ben and Mara Danzinger, but from her own experiences with it, and even learns that her own two teachers can be wrong. It's also interesting to see what sort of things exist in this world, and how different it can be from other Supernatural tales. She even finds a bit of romance, but her job and its crazy hours might end up tearing them apart.

I highly recommend this book. It's an enjoyable, suspenseful read that keeps Harper, and the reader, on their toes. Around every corner lurks another threat, and she manages to rise to the occasion. I can't wait to see more from Kat Richardson.