Beyond the Shroud by Rick Hautala

Rating: 4.0

What it's about:
David Robinson's life has taken several bad turns. First, his daughter dies. Then his marriage crumbles and his career as a mystery writer falls apart. But after he is killed in a hit-and-run accident, David quickly learns that he will face his most harrowing challenges as a wraith in the Shadowlands. And David soon learns that power is a blade that cuts two ways.
-taken from Barnes&Noble.com

My thoughts:
Beyond the Shroud takes place in two planes of existence: the Skinworld, occupied by the living; and the shadowlands, occupied by the dead. Five years after his little girl dies in his arms, his divorce and his failure as a novelist, David wakes up in the Shadowlands. He was hit by a car and killed. Rick Hautala, the author, does a really good job at making the landscape of the Shadowlands clear for the reader. It's a very creepy setting where all the buildings are in ruin and everything has a yellowish sepia tone. There are other dead people, or wraiths, that occupy the Shadowlands and some of them are less than benign. While David is in the Shadowlands, he happens across his dead daughter Karen. Or is it really Karen? Meanwhile, back in the Skinworld, David's ex-wife Sarah has problems of her own in the form of Tony. Tony has found a bizarre knife that is just pulsing to kill kill kill.....and he (possessed by the knife) has his sights set on Sarah. So David tries to get through to Sarah by using any means possible to warn her of the danger she is in. Beyond the Shroud is an eerie book with a setting that alternates between the bright sunshine of the Skinworld and the bleak crumbling Shadowlands. If you are a fan of the macabre, Beyond the Shroud is not to be missed!