City of Masks

After her husband's death and a "visitation" of his spirit, Cree Black realizes she has special abilities. She opens a business to aid people experiencing hauntings. When Lila Beauforte moves back into her family manse in New Orleans and a series of horrific events follows, the family calls Cree's firm for assistance. Using scientific and paranormal research in addition to her empathic skills, Cree copes with skeptical relatives and nasty ectoplasmic manifestations. Anna Fields performs this plunge into a closet of family skeletons with conviction. As ghosts terrorize Lila and Cree, Anna Fields keeps the listener in thrall. Her characterizations are original, ranging from masked Mardi Gras monsters and juju women to hysterical victims and diabolical connivers. Throughout the engaging, if predictable, plot Fields is top-notch. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

January 6, 2003
Hecht (Skull Session; The Babel Effect; etc.) introduces empathic investigator ("ghost buster" to the layman) Cree Black in a haunted house tale set—where else?—in a storied New Orleans mansion. Cree, an investigator of paranormal phenomena with a slick Seattle office, is retained by the vaguely sleazy Ronald Beauforte, the last scion of a decaying New Orleans family. His sister, Lila, is losing her mind, and she insists it is because her family's ancestral mansion is haunted. Cree is summoned South to see if she can use her empathic talents to suss out the ghosts and prevent Lila's disintegration. Cree is still nursing years-old grief over the death of her husband, even talking with him in her mind; this accounts for her sensitive psychic antennae, and also explains why she's loath to acknowledge the unsubtle romantic attentions of her business partner, Edgar. Since Edgar is tied up with another case, Cree has to fly solo to bayou country, facing down the Machiavellian Beauforte family matriarch, local hoodoo practitioners, and even a menacing hired gun with the sobriquet "Loup Garou." Hecht explains aspects of modern-day ghost hunting and offers a Faustian red herring in the form of a handsome young psychiatrist. Yet while he paints a rich, compelling picture of the world of paranormal research, the plot holds few surprises, and the characters' psychology and motives tend to be overexplained. Hecht's previous thrillers have been impressively sophisticated, but this predictable—though atmospheric—effort may cause readers to think they, too, have supernatural powers: they know how the book will end well before they've finished it. Author tour.