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Karma Marx exorcises houses for a living. She is a half-poltergeist herself, but some people just don't want paranormal creatures in their homes, so they hire her to get rid of the assorted imps, ghosts, poltergeists, and spirits of all sorts that inhabit the old dwellings in which they lived in a previous life. She is supposed to send the spirits to the ever-after, a sort of limbo, but being soft-hearted, she usually rescues the creatures and brings them home with her. After all, she doesn't know what happens in limbo. She has killed one or two of the errant ghosts, but they were really bad 'uns. She now has a bunch of Australian house pixies, a Russian house spirit who likes nothing better than to clean, an agoraphobic Roman goddess of door hinges and thresholds who lives in the kitchen cupboard and reads Cosmo, and a vegetable spirit who lives in the refrigerator as house guests. Unbeknownst to Karma, her father had agreed that she would foster an orphaned teenaged poltergeist for a month. Karma is paying Wergeld to the Akashic League for inadvertently causing the death of another paranormal when she was a child, so she must take Pixie (who prefers to be called Desdemona). Then her husband Spider comes home and tells her he wants her to exorcise an old house on the outskirts of town that night. When she hesitates, he offers her the divorce she has wanted for a long time in exchange for her services. She agrees. The resident poltergeist of the Walsh House does not want to sell his home. As long as he is in residence, no one that he does not approve of can live there. Karma and Pixie get locked in the house overnight with several other strange characters. When a murder occurs Karma must solve the crime before the spell expires in the morning. This is the first in the series by Katie Macalister writing as Kate Marsh. I loved it. It strikes just the right tone of believability. The paranormal creatures are just part of the story. Full humans rarely enter this world, apparently, and when they do, they are skeptical just as you or I would be. I look forward to the next in this new series. It's a great light read for those times when you just can't seem to settle on a new book.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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