Vanished, by Kat Richardson

The latest in the Ghostwalker series is quite interesting. It starts off with Harper receiving a phone call in the middle of the night from her dead boyfriend, and just gets weirder from that point, if you can imagine that. She decides she needs to return to the scene to investigate further, so she flies to Los Angeles, back to her roots. She pays a visit to her mother, and gets the astounding revelation that her Dad didn't die by accident, but killed himself. Digging through his old journals, she begins to understand that he had also been plagued by visions of stranged creatures living in the Grey, and finally took his own life to keep them from exploiting him for their nefarious purposes.


After a few days there, she gets a call from Edward Kammeling, leader of the vampires back in Seattle, and returns on his private jet for a meeting with him. One of his fellow vampires back in London has been looking after Edward's business interests there for some time, and has disappeared. He convinces Harper to be his agent there, to find out what's happened. Harper has also had a couple of vivid dreams about her ex-boyfriend, Will, who works at Sotheby's there, being in danger, so she may be able to look into Kammerling's problems and check on Will, at the same time.

Richardson's tale of Harper's escapades in London is filled with all sorts of interesting little details about the area and its history. It feels like she either just got back from a vacation there, spent a lot of time studying Lonely Planet's London, or was a student of British history; maybe all three of the above.

As one might surmise, the vampire's troubles and Will's situation are linked. The cabal that has taken over Edward's territory has also kidnapped Will as a lever on Harper, and some of her old enemies are trying to trap her and use her for their own ends.

This one has some great action, eerie moments, and is pretty fun. The only downside from my perspective is that at the end of this novel, there's still some integral details that have to be dealt with back in Seattle, and we last see Harper on the plane, flying home. So, we'll have to wait for the sequel to see how this batch of troubles gets dealt with. Looks like the book, Labyrinth, won't be out till August, so check back then and we'll talk.