Book review: Living With The Dead - Kelley Armstrong

Firstly I want to thank the people of Little Brown and Orbit publishing for granting me a review copy of the following book.

Living with the dead is a book that reminds me of Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake vampire Hunter Series but with more realistic characters. When I say realistic I am comparing Armstrong's characters to Anita Blake - Blake is the overly brave main character in the Anita Blake series. All of Blake's characteristics are very strong - almost to the point where she seems unrealistic.
Armstrong's characters, however, are very believable. There are six major characters in the story - Robyn, Karl, Hope, Colm and Adele. Robyn is the only character devoid of any supernatural powers.

Adele is a paparazzo who's assignment is to follow Portia Kane (basically Armstrong's version of Paris Hilton - very famous and very pointless). Adele is also somewhat psychic and has the power to remote view through other's eyes, a useful power for a paparazzo. Colm is her arranged fiance - arranged by the psychic family they're apart of. He's clumsy and always messing things up even though his main aim is usually to please Adele.
At the beginning of the story Portia takes a snapshot of her 'frenemy' jasmine wearing a hideous dress, but she has also, unknowingly, taken a picture of something much more important. Portia forwards the image to her PR Robyn - who later turns out to be the prime suspect in Portia's murder. Robyn's best friend Hop and her boyfriend Karl (who's a werewolf) try their best to solve the murder and clear Robyn's name, all the while they are being followed by Adele who needs to delete that picture.
The cop who's investigating the case also has an advantage - he can see ghosts, and he has a very helpful one for this case.

Each chapter is written from a different character's point of view, which adds a nice touch because it allows the detective's efforts in solving the crime to become part of the story even though he doesn't have much interaction with the other characters. Robyn has the most page time in the book, which means that for the beginning of the book there's not a lot of supernatural activity. As the story continues the detailed and interwoven supernatural society of Armstong's world is slowly revealed and you won't be able to put the book down until you find out how it ends.