Seattle's never looked so gothic.
Written by Kat Richardson, the Greywalker series follows Harper Blaine, a hard-boiled Private Investigator who dies for a couple minutes before being brought back, but came back... different. More specifically, she has become a Greywalker, a person who can navigate the Grey, the boundary between the worlds of the normal and paranormal. Quickly drawn into the supernatural goings-on of Seattle including a newbie vampire, a witch and her ghost boarder, she has to learn to accept her new life.The Greywalker series spans 9 books:
- Greywalker
- Poltergeist
- Underground
- Vanished
- Labyrinth
- Downpour
- Seawitch
- Possession
- Revenant
Richardson has noted that the 9th book will be the last in the series, at least for the time being.
- Action Girl: Harper, naturally, but Mara also has her moments (although she strongly prefers to avoid them whenever possible).
- All Myths Are True
- Back from the Dead: How Harper becomes the titular Greywalker. However, while this is necessary, it is not sufficient on its own, as many people die and are brought back through medical intervention without becoming Greywalkers.
- Big Bad: Wygan.
- Cute and Psycho: Alice Liddel. The name may have been a clue.
- Disposable Vagrant: In the third book, Harper is drawn into the goings-on through this. Quinton being voluntarily homeless helps due to his contacts within the "community".
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the books have One Word Titles:
- Greywalker
- Poltergeist
- Underground
- Vanished: Verbed Title, subtrope of One-Word Title.
- Labyrinth
- Downpour
- Seawitch
- Possession
- Revenant
- In the Blood: Bloodline seems to play a role in becoming a Greywalker, since Harper's father may have been one.
- Job Title: Some of the book titles are roles:
- Greywalker
- Seawitch
- Little Useless Gun: Technically neither little nor useless, Harper carries around a handgun habitually - particularly after dying - even though against the overwhelming majority of entities she has actually shot with it treat it as an annoyance at best.
- Masquerade: Justified Trope, as most people literally cannot see ghosts or the oddities of vampires and the like. Even witches like Mara find their perception to be extremely poor in comparison to Harper's. However, people confronted with undeniable evidence of supernatural activity take an incredibly skeptical view, including a researcher who was deliberately trying to induce psychokinetic instances and called in Harper to investigate when his results became too good, on the basis that the idea that his experiment was actually doing what he told the participants it was doing was clearly impossible.
- Mind Rape: Wygan's forcing of a knot of Grey into Harper's chest is played this way.
- Mood Whiplash: Going straight from Harper's breakdown from the Mind Rape above to her waking up cutely with Will certainly qualifies.
- Occult Detective: Harper was a PI before dying, but after she definitely fulfils this role, assisted by Mara Danzinger and tech genius Quinton.
- One-Word Title: All of the books' titles:
- Greywalker
- Poltergeist
- Underground
- Vanished: Verbed Title, subtrope of One-Word Title.
- Labyrinth
- Downpour
- Seawitch
- Possession
- Revenant
- Portmantitle: A few of the books' titles:
- Underground
- Downpour
- Seawitch
- Really 700 Years Old: Edward Kammerling, the head vampire of Seattle, is 300 years old.
- Shown Their Work: The author is often fairly careful about the degree of research they do (the second and subsequent books end with what is effectively a reference list), even though they are pretty open about changing it for narrative purposes. This may be a reaction to early criticisms from fans.
- Team Pet: Technically Harper's, but Chaos, her pet ferret, offers comfort and even occasionally is practically useful in the field.
- The Unreveal: The vampiric nature of one of Harper's clients acts as this to Quinton.
- Verbed Title: The book called Vanished.
