Shutter

This spine-tingling debut, which takes place in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, is equal parts compelling supernatural horror story, crime thriller, and moving account of growing up on a reservation.

Rita Todacheene is employed by the Albuquerque police department as a forensic photographer. Her exceptional photographic abilities have solved numerous cases; she has an almost mystical ability to capture details. Rita has been keeping a secret for a while: she sees the ghosts of crime victims, and these ghosts lead her to the clues that other investigators miss.

Rita, who sees a lone doorway leading traumatized spirits back to the living, is plagued by persistent ghosts that disrupt her personal life and won't go to sleep. She was reared by her grandmother on the Navajo tribe, but left because of her taboo and terrifying psychological powers. She's been cut off from pals and has into afoul of the law as a result.

And now it could be the reason she ends up dead.

Rita is dispatched to photograph a purported suicide scene on a highway overpass. However, the victim's angry, deranged ghost, who maintains that she was murdered, latches onto Rita, sending her on a mission to exact revenge on her killers and putting her in the path of one of Albuquerque's most dangerous cartels. Shutter is an explosive debut from one of the most potent new talents in crime fiction, written in bright, gory prose.