In Golden Blood is the third science-fiction alternate history novel by Stephen Woodworth

Stephen Woodworth

Stephen Woodworth is an American speculative fiction author, and a native of Fullerton, California.- Publications :* "Scary Monsters" , in Writers of the Future VIII * "Relaxation" , in Plot #1...

 featuring the "Violet" detective Natalie Lindstrom

Natalie Lindstrom

Natalie Lindstrom is the primary protagonist of a supernatural alternate-history detective series by Stephen Woodworth. A "Violet" with the North American Afterlife Communications Corps, she is one of a small percentage of the population born with purple irises and the ability to channel the dead,...

. It was written in 2005, and won First Place in the Writers of the Future

Writers of the Future

Writers of the Future is a science fiction and fantasy story contest that was originated by L. Ron Hubbard in the early 1980s. Hubbard...

Contest.

Plot summary

Natalie Lindstrom has a gift: the power to speak to the dead, to solve crimes by interviewing murder victims. But now Natalie wants to escape. Escape from the voices that fill her head. Escape from the organization that has used her as a crime-solving tool...and now wants to recruit her daughter. So Natalie takes a job as far from crime and punishment as she can get: with an archaeologist in the mountains of Peru. Her job: to find a trove of priceless artifacts — by channeling those who lived and died at an ancient Incan site.

But in the towering Andes, Natalie enters a 500-year-old storm of betrayal, murder, greed, and rage — and she cannot silence the voices of the dead. The slaughtered reach out to her. The slaughterers boast of their crimes. Alone, cut off from her family, Natalie faces a chilling realization: every truth she uncovers is leading her one step closer to a terror beyond imagining. (1)