“What people referred to as “ghosts” could range from merest shards, no more that a roaming impulse or hunger, to virtually complete personalities.”
Cree Black investigates a house haunted by a particularly vicious ghost — or ghosts — in the first of this horror and mystery cross-genre series.
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TITLE:
CITY OF MASKS: A CREE BLACK THRILLER
WRITER:
by Daniel Hecht
SERIES:
The Cree Black Mystery Series #1
GENRE:
Horror Fiction, Mystery, Thriller.
DESCRIPTORS:
Ghost Stories, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Old Houses, New Orleans, Louisiana, Ghosts, Scientific Investigations,
CHARACTERS
Lucretia “Cree” Black, A psychologist and parapsychologist who sees, feels and talks to ghosts.
Joyce Wu, A slim Asian-American with a Brooklyn accent who handles the research and business end of things.
Edgar Mayfield, Cree’s partner who handles the science and technology aspects — he longs to see a ghost.
Lila Warren, She had a traumatic experience with ghosts at the old Beauforte House which threatens to break her.
Ronald Beauforte, Lila’s skeptical brother who wants to protect his sister — even if it weakens her.
Jack Warren, Lila’s husband who doesn’t want to deal with these ghosts.
Charmain Beauforte, The matriarch of the Beauforte family — a difficult woman to work with.
Paul “Fitz” Fitzpatrick Lila’s psychiatrist and friend of the family.
SUMMARY:
Lucretia “Cree” Black is a paranormal investigator and a licensed psychologist. She is also an empath, able to feel other people so acutely that she often takes on bits of their personality. It’s a talent that makes her so effective in contacting ghosts — and placing her sanity, even her life, in jeopardy.
Cree agrees to investigate the haunting of the Beauforte House in New Orleans, where Lila Warren was terrorized and nearly broken by a ghost — or many ghosts. However, Cree’s business partner, Edgar Mayfield is in Boston with a promising haunted house case of his own. Thus Cree travels to Louisiana to investigate the house, on her own.
When Lila walks Cree through the house and tells her about the things that happened to her, Cree is astonished at the rare kinds of ghostly manifestations that Lila encountered. But there is more — something Lila can’t or won’t talk about.
Furthermore, the people around Lila are set in opposition to Cree. From Lila’s skeptical brother to her protective psychiatrist to her husband who wants her to stay exactly the same doting Lila to her disappointed mother. Cree’s line of work endears her to no one and her defense of Lila frightens them all.
But against a haunting so malicious and so violent, will Cree be able to save Lila’s sanity without losing her own?
APPEAL:
Daniel Hecht tells a very compelling story in City of Masks. It’s both a mystery and a horror novel combined and he follows the tenets of both genres carefully. The pace is slower than most mysteries I’ve read, more like a ghost story with a pace that slowly creeps up to the horrific apparition. Yet the narrative takes time to follow Cree tracking down the wrong clues that prove to be fruitless like many detective mysteries.
The story is lush with descriptions of setting, the city, the flora and especially the wet heat — you begin the feel the kind of heat that Louisiana is famous for. He anchors his story with the detail of the history and customs of a place, its smells and tastes, its noise and vibrancy — or lack thereof. You get a genuine feel for New Orleans, its pageantry and its superstitions.
The story is told in first person, past tense. Cree Black is the narrator. She gives you insight into what she is thinking and observations into what other people may be thinking or confessing that she had no clue. She has keen insight into human nature but sometimes gets it wrong — and she leads you down the paths she takes even when she is wrong and has to correct later. Her observations of Lila’s mother are a good case in point.
NOTES:
After more than a decade since reading the last book the scared me, I finally ran into another one. This book knew all of my buttons and punched them regularly. It creeped me out on at least five different occasions. This made my favorite list by virtue of having scared me when I thought I was too jaded to get scared.
READALIKES:
Daniel Hecht wrote two other books in the Cree Black series: Land of Echoes: A Cree Black Novel
Of his earlier books, I would try Skull Session
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