City of Masks [Import] [Paperback]

Daniel Hecht (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743461541
• ISBN-13: 978-0743461542
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,966,619 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)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.