Poltergeist

"Poltergeist" is the second book in the Greywalker series, about Harper Blaine, a Seattle PI who's near-death experience has left her with the ability to see and enter The Grey, a parallel space where ghosts and broken memories of the dead abide.

"Poltergeist" has a very original premise: a psychology experiment that involves the creation of an man-made poltergeist through the collective belief of a group of subjects.

Ths builds on the "Philip Experiment", carried out in Toronto in 1972, to create a fictional character that would nevertheless manifest in a séance.

Kat Richardson take this idea and builds it into a compelling murder investigation involving an over-bearing professor, a group of edgy individuals who all believe they have created a ghost and a poltergeist that is being used as a weapon by somebody.

Kat Richardson does a wornderful job of providing a strong logical explanation for all the action while deepening Harper's understanding of The Grey and her own unlooked for abilities.

The tale is told in a straightforward, whodunnit, linear fashion that grounds the story and grants it a kind of realism.

This is strong offering for the second book in a series. I'm looking forward to reading the rest..

If you're interested in learning more about the Philip experiment, take a look at the video below.


The Philip Experiment from Rachel Nason on Vimeo.


( )

Female, PI, greywalker investigates university study where group "creates" a poltergeist which she believes killed a group member.

So overall, I was really a big fan of the first novel, so I decided to continue on with the "Greywalker" series . I thought this second novel, was just an okay read for me. It wasn't as exciting as the beginning of the series, but things that are essential to the main plot of the series are included, so it not a good idea to skip over this book.

This time around, we get to a see little bit more into the backgrounds of our main set characters. Our main protagonist, Harper, gets a stronger hold on her new found supernatural powers and learns how to have some control of "the grey" with help from Mara, and the creepy (I don't know if we can even call him an ally at this point cause he's a bit iffy at this point) vampire Carlos.

Richardson keeps up the detailed writing again in "Poltergeist" by amp-ping up the supernatural and adds a poltergeist that becomes a problem to university research group. It was cool, but honestly, I felt a little bored while reading the book. And it could of been the mood I was in reading wise, but the excitement of the plot was just so-so. Although I do like how the mystery/detective style plot line is played out in this series.
( )

Harper is hired by a local psychology professor to investigate the unexpected happenings in an experiment he's running on psychokinesis, involving a group of participants' ability to "create" their own poltergeist. Little does the skeptical Professor Gantner know how qualified this particular PI is for the job. The further she investigates, however, the more convinced Harper is that the group of misfits has, in fact, created a real ghost. And, when Dr. Gantner's assistant Mark is suddenly murdered in a decidedly unusual fashion, Harper immediately sets out on the trail of the ghost and the individual controlling it. From the spooky, beginning build-up to the interesting middle, it was pretty good. Towards the end the story started moving haphazardly and became predictable. I still look forward to reading more of this series. ( )

I've read the entire Greywalker series, and I picked this one up to re-read because of it's fairly unusual premise: can a group of people create a poltergeist through the power of their belief? The smarmy researcher doesn't believe it; he's got an entirely different ax to grind. So when his group starts to actually get results, he hires P.I. Harper Blaine to figure out who (besides his own plant) is producing the manifestations, and how. And then people start dying...

I enjoyed this book (again) and ended up re-reading the entire series. It'd been long enough that the plot details were fuzzy in my mind. I classify it as a paranormal mystery.