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.)
