Forgotten Author: Daniel Hecht

Perhaps this should be labeled "lost" author. Daniel Hecht started a great series and then disappeared. This three book series features Cree Black, a parapsychologist with a haunted past in Seattle, Washington. CITY OF MASKS (2003)

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.

LAND OF ECHOES (2004)

At a New Mexico boarding school for gifted Navajo children, a 15-year-old boy endures a series of violent, agonizing seizures. The boy's convulsions are all the more troubling because extensive medical tests have ruled out a physical cause--and because the boys surrounding him during his seizures seem to become paralyzed by the same force. Parapsychologist Cree Black is almost forcibly brought in on the case by her mentor and is soon convinced that the boarding school is facing a bout with demonic possession. Cree explains a ghost as "fragments of a once-living human personality that somehow keep manifesting in the absence of a physical body." If she can puzzle out what the ghost wants, she reasons, then it can be banished. The isolation of the sagebrush desert surrounding the school is especially effective as are the ties with the Navajo legends of malevolent ghosts and skinwalkers.

BONES OF THE BARBARY COAST (2006)

An old family friend, SFPD homicide detective Bert Marchetti, who's nearing retirement and wishes to leave the force with as few loose ends as possible, enlists Cree's help with an unusual skeletal find"an apparent victim of the 1906 earthquake whose strange physiognomy leads the forensic anthropologists on the case to dub him the Wolfman. The detective's motives become suspect when Cree realizes that his agenda may include settling scores with a deformed radiologist Marchetti believes is an unpunished murderer. The chance discovery of a 19th-century diary enables Cree to piece together some details about the Wolfman

About the Author:

Daniel Hecht was a professional guitarist for twenty years. In 1989, he retired from musical performance to take up writing, and he received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1992. He is the author of two previous novels, Skull Session and The Babel Effect.