Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1459778 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.19" h x 5.58" w x 8.20" l, 1.14 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 1 pages

From Amazon.com
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

From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Cree (short for Lucretia) Black is a parapsychologist--what the skeptics disdainfully call a "ghostbuster." Since her husband's untimely death nine years ago, she has been able to use her empathic abilities to sense the presence of ghostly manifestations and to liberate them from the realm of the living. Cree's newest case involves the haunted Beauforte House, located in the Garden District of New Orleans. The Beaufortes are your typical southern Gothic family: Charmaine, the aristocratic but monstrous mother; debonairly dissipated son Ronald; Jack, the social-climbing son-in-law; and daughter Lila, who is the only one to have actually seen the ghost. The rest of the Beauforte clan believe Lila is mentally unbalanced and have agreed to hire Cree in an effort to humor her. But, soon after arriving at the house, Cree also sees the ghost and is physically attacked by it. The authentic, supernatural locale contributes the requisite spooky atmosphere--think Anne Rice at her least histrionic--and the eccentric characters are well drawn and believable. Michael Gannon
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