WALKING DEAD

Author: C.E. Murphy ISBN: 9780373803019 9/2009 PARANORMAL Publisher: LUNA

For once, Joanne Walker's not out to save the world. She's come to terms with the host of shamanic powers she's been given, her job as a police detective has been relatively calm, and she's got a love life for the first time in memory. Not bad for a woman who started out the year mostly dead. But it's Halloween, and the undead have just crashed Joanne's party. Now, with her mentor Coyote still missing, she has to figure out how to break the spell that has let the ghosts, zombies and even the Wild Hunt come back. Unfortunately, there's no shamanic handbook explaining how to deal with the walking dead. And if they have anything to say about it--which they do--no one's getting out of there alive.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

I am so excited to be with Joanne Walker again! No matter that WALKING DEAD is not my favorite of the Walker Papers series, Joanne will forever be a character near and dear to my heart. What she does and where she goes I need to know about.

But, I think I need to face the facts here. Nothing is going to be as good as URBAN SHAMAN. It was exciting, fresh, and a ground breaker that just cannot be topped. I know exactly when and where I was when I read it. As the series wears on, it loses some of its punch, its intensity. Not that the plots are any less wicked, mind you; the whole cauldron craziness in WALKING DEAD is a gem. It is simply not as fresh as it was, and I am not as surprised by things as before.

Yes, the descriptions and scenes are still vivid and wild, but the characters are less so. WALKING DEAD also lacks that fantastic foreplay between Joanne and Morrison that motivates me to devour this book. I need that tension between them in hopes that maybe, on the next page, there will be a stolen kiss or even a touch. In this one there is not enough interaction between them for me to care. Heck, at one point I start to think Joanne should just date Thor and call it a day. That is not a good thing, I assure you.

All of that being what it is, Joanne Walker is still a character I will put up against any other female lead that I love. If she is featured in a story, I will read it, regardless. I need to know how life turns out for her and when her past will finally catch up to her. And I still don't know where Coyote is! So, I anxiously await book five.

Shannon Johnson