City of Masks: A Cree Black Thriller

If you love New Orleans, like I do, you will also love this book. The author does a wonderful job of capturing the "feel" of New Orleans and tells a darn good story in the process. Couldn't put it down. It is scary so don't read it if you are alone in the house...

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.

Daniel Hecht isn't capable of writing a bad book or of writing badly. With an imagination as fertile as his, and with superior writing/narrative skill, whatever he tackles is never less than intriguing. City of Masks is no exception. Hecht tackles the world of the paranormal via engaging heroine Cree Black--a thoroughly believable, fully dimensional woman who just happens to be a ghost-hunting psychologist.Hecht flirts perilously close to dubious territory in having his characters posit the possibilities of recovered/repressed memory (discredited by courts and by the APA) and multiple personality disorder (discredited universally--but so beloved by its supposed victims that it's been renamed DID) and satantic ritual abuse (again, discredited.) Despite these flirtations with discredibted syndromes, it is a credit to the author that he never goes all the way down any of those roads and, in fact, builds a viable case for sad, haunted Lila--whose ghosts Cree has come to New Orleans to "bust."The characters are so well drawn and so believably driven/tormented/haunted that they come across as entirely sympathetic. And the author's research into the city of New Orleans is seamlessly woven into the narrative so that we see the city through Cree's eyes, rather than through the author's--no small feat.While the villain of the piece was obvious to me very early on, it was nevertheless fascinating to see how the author was going to take us there and to learn what surprises were in store. And, indeed, there are some unexpected twists. The achievement of this book is the author's ability to make us care about his central characters, thereby making us willing to travel with them into territory where suspension of disbelief might not otherwise be possible. Most of us are willing to entertain the possibility that there might be ghosts; Hecht extrapolates on the possibilities in convincing fashion.Highly recommended.

"City of Masks" is a wonderful read. It's beautifully written, and the concept is exciting and inventive. The nicely crafted plot and interesting characters demonstrate Hecht's skill as an author. This is the kind of novel you can't put down--it's creepy and suspenseful, it presents fascinating ideas and situations, it's touching and romantic and funny, and Cree as a main character is nearly flawless. I can't wait for the next book starring Cree Black! I highly recommend this book--give one to your friends too!

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.