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Grace Quintero is the woman of John Burns' dreams. She's a Mexican beauty — long, dark hair, even longer legs. A mechanic by trade, she's into hot rods and Rockabilly and she's slathered in more tattoos than L.A. Ink's Kat Von D.

The only problem is she's a dead chick.

So begins Charles De Lint's latest novel, The Mystery of Grace. At a Halloween party the unsuspecting John woos this inky, dreamy Grace and the two share a hot tryst. But Grace vanishes from his apartment at sunrise, leaving John dejected. He combs the city, hoping she didn't find him coyote ugly.

Grace's excuse is much more complicated: She was recently murdered in a convenience store robbery and meets John on a one-day visitor's pass to the land of the living on La Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead). Worse than pumpkins at midnight, she's whisked back to the afterlife at sunrise.

Leave it to the industriously prolific fantasy writer De Lint to marry Corpse Bride and Cinderella with L.A. Ink. World Fantasy Award winner De Lint's "mythic fiction" has been billed as fantasy for people who don't otherwise dig fantasy. He often uses the ethnic and spiritual melting pots of North American cities as fodder for his modern mythologies. In De Lint's books, ancient legends and superstitions simmer beneath the surface of contemporary urban life.

Once again the author has nicely fused his mythic patchwork (black magic and prehistoric Hohokam lore, Mexican festivals and Catholic imagery) with the every day (old American cars and the music of Dick Dale, The Torquays and Link Wray), creating a punchy, interesting story that surprisingly isn't bogged down by all the talk of death and walking spirits. De Lint may not have intended this, but with Grace's soliloquies about the lost art of American automobile craftsmanship, the story does occasionally read like a creative eulogy for the big three in the shadow of the auto bailout; but that's a quirk, not a defining feature of the narrative.

In the afterlife, recently deceased Grace is thrilled to learn that twice a year — on Dia de los Muertos and on Beltane (May Day) — the veils weaken between life and death and the dead can cross over.

Grace has reason to walk the world as a ghost. Her afterlife is a drag. She's trapped in a two-block representation of her neighbourhood, all encased in a grey, misty orb. Joining Grace are those who also died in the neighbourhood surrounding the old Alverson Arms building.

Is it heaven, hell or limbo? No one's really sure, but most have the hunch that there should be more to the hereafter than their little prison.

Grace longs for the desert and the mountains of the American Southwest, where she raced for the horizon in her painstakingly restored '48 Ford coupe. She longs for John, who miraculously works out the mystery of her disappearance and meets her on Beltane, proposing a creative relationship that transcends the bonds of death.

John provides an anchor for De Lint's depictions of the living world, with John's perspective represented in third person narration and Grace's in the first person, and this is where De Lint's otherwise excellent story falters. The effect of jumping back and forth in the love plot proves distracting. Grace is a fascinating character, and De Lint might have done better to explore her more fully.

As Grace broods on the meaning of life, death and love, she fixes cars in limbo. She thinks about the legacy of her feisty, tattooed grandfather, her Abuelo, who taught her everything she knows about hot rods, imbuing her with quiet confidence. "Tattoos," he tells her, "are the stories in your heart, written on your skin."

Lucky for Grace she carries her tattoos with her in death. While the "Mi Vida Loca" or "FoMoCo" (Ford Motor Company) tats might not do her much good, the enormous portrait of her namesake, Our Lady of Altagracia, inked on her shoulder, proves a powerful protection from the bruja (witch) who has created the Alverson Arms world.

The fruits of Grace's quiet soul searching make for a satisfying ending that upholds the mystery of death behind the misty grey veil. "Wherever you go," she concedes, "you take yourself with you."

Kelly McManus is a writer and journalist.