City of Masks: A Cree Black Novel [Paperback]

Daniel Hecht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2004

In City of Masks, the first Cree Black novel, parapsychologist Cree and her partner take a case in New Orleans's Garden District that leaves them fearing for their own lives. The 150-year-old Beauforte House has long stood empty, until Lila Beauforte resumes residence and starts to see some of the house's secrets literally come to life. Tormented by an insidious and violent presence, Lila finds herself trapped in a life increasingly filled with childhood terrors. It takes Cree's unconventional take on psychology and her powerful natural empathy with Lila to navigate the dangerous worlds of spirit and memory, as they clash in a terrifying tale of mistaken identity and murder.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If it's New Orleans and the novel's main characters have been dead for years but are still walking around terrorizing people, it must be an Anne Rice adventure. But it isn't--it's the first in a new series starring a fascinating heroine, Seattle parapsychologist Cree Black, whose own murky past and special gifts make her the perfect choice to investigate a haunted house in the Garden District and the family that's slowly being scared to death. Lila Beauforte has moved back into her ancestral home, now inhabited by ghosts who seem bent on driving her out. Cree, her senses more attuned to the presence of revenants than flesh-and-blood bad guys, shakes enough closets in Beauforte House to bring the skeletons out, solve mysteries of the past as well as the present, and fall in love with an equally appealing if more traditional investigator of the unconscious who may be able to help her free herself from her own emotional prison. She's a smart, vulnerable, and attractive character in an unearthly and unusual thriller that starts off a promising new series with a howl and presages a long run on the bestseller list. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Hecht's New Age ghost story introduces Cree Black, a psychologist of renown transformed years ago into a hyper-empathic ghostbuster by a spectral visit from her beloved husband. Lured from her upscale Seattle offices to a spirit-infested mansion in the heart of decadent New Orleans, she immediately identifies with the haunted socialite Lila Beauforte. This allows reader Fields to showcase her skills, as Cree's somewhat brusque, unaccented speech subtly shifts into a quavering southern drawl. The actress also uses an impressive variety of bayou accents to distinguish the other New Orleanians-from the good ol' boy gruffness of Lila's worried husband to the cultured, iron magnolia locutions of her aristocratic mother. The novel has its share of spooky suspense-courtesy of anthropomorphic furniture, disappearing snakes and a pig-faced man-ghost with rape on its mind-and is filled with enough scientific rationale to make these sinister shades seem surprisingly credible. But the source of the ghosts isn't difficult to discern, and the many repeat analyses of the case elements will lead restless listeners to agree with Cree's assistant Joyce Wu when she complains (in Fields's amusingly on-target Long Island accent), "The metaphysics he-ah are a complete no-brain-ah, and I'm sick 'a goin' over it and over it."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (January 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582343594
• ISBN-13: 978-1582343594
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #923,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family Spirit, February 11, 2004

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: City of Masks: A Cree Black Novel (Paperback)

I bought 'City of Masks' based on a new release description expecting a standard fare ghost story (which I like), read the inside cover and thought it was a ghost romance story (which I don't like) and came very close to putting it on my 'read someday' pile. Fortunately I didn't. While it is a little of both of the above, it is quite a bit more as well, For the mystery reader looking for something both unusual and a little scary, Daniel Hecht has turned out a solid, entertaining read.

Cree Black is one of a team of spiritual investigators who specialize in ghost removal. She is a clinical psychologist who discovered during a terrible loss that ghosts exist and she is sensitive to them. This sensitivity extends to those who are haunted as well, and Cree's exorcisms are often intense personal crises. When she responds to the call of a socially prominent New Orleans family who is being haunted by a violent and menacing spirit she quickly is up to her neck in tradition and ectoplasm.

A pig headed ghost repeatedly molests a woman in a family mansion, a news reported dies without any explanation, and the head of a family finds herself desperately trying to preserve what honor and sanity are left for her heirs. Hecht's style bores deep into all the main characters, but deepest into the heart of Cree, whose own ghosts have brought her life to a standstill. To solve the mystery of the apparitions she will have to start the tortuous journey of unraveling her own issues.

Hecht accomplishes this without histrionics. Without overpainting the atmospherics and real violence that lurks beneath the surface of New Orleans and the Mardi Gras. The end result is a novel so believable that you sometimes want to take notes. Many of the characters, sympathetic and otherwise, quickly take on a life of their own against a finely drawn background of wealth and poverty in Louisiana. I believe Hecht has written a sequel, to which I am looking forward.

43 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars interesting premise...disappoints, August 22, 2005

By 

S. Harris (Atlanta GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Masks: A Cree Black Novel (Paperback)

I really started out liking this story. Loved the New Orleans setting and the idea of ghost hunting combined with a possible hoodoo/voodoo connection. But the character of Cree Black got on my nerves so bad that I found myself not caring much about her one way or the other. She is supposed to be a 'brilliant' Ph.D in psychology, but she's an emotional train wreck who can hardly navigate her way through life. Why anyone would pay her thousands to exorcise their ghosts is beyond me. She's ineffectual, totally incapable of intimacy, lies compulsively to her friends and family, and seems stuck in this self-pity time warp over her husband who died 9 years ago! Please!

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern Science meets the Ghostbusters, January 5, 2003

By 

Lisa Tucker (Louisville, Kentucky United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Masks: A Cree Black Thriller (Cree Black Thrillers) (Hardcover)

From page one I knew that this book was the pick of the litter from my local chain bookstore. It happened to be a second string choice for me but it turned into the best book I have purchased since Patricia Cornwell's 'Kay Scarpetta' novels.
Cree Black reads as a very likeable and down to earth person, an easy to relate to character although, sometimes I could hear myself screaming "Dont go in there!" to her as I read some of the more spine tingling and scary situations she put herself into. The addition of modern science adds so much to this story that I almost believed in ghosts myself.
While this book shows some of the darker or seedier sides of New Orleans it is also charming and nostalgic in its descriptions. I loved the history, the cemetaries and the old Beauforte house. What great descriptive detail this writer gives! I look forward to much more ghost hunting tales with Cree Black and Daniel Hecht. Hurry Daniel, I want more.