Daniel Hecht Books In Order

Cree Black Books In Publication Order

  1. City of Masks (2003)
  2. Land Of Echoes (2004)
  3. Bones of the Barbary Coast (2006)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Skull Session (1998)
  2. The Babel Effect (2000)
  3. Puppets (2001)
  4. On Brassard’s Farm (2018)

Cree Black Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Daniel Hecht Books Overview

City of Masks

In City of Masks, the first Cree Black novel, parapsychologist Cree and her partner take a case in New Orleans’s Garden District that leaves them fearing for their own lives. The 150 year old Beauforte House has long stood empty, until Lila Beauforte resumes residence and starts to see some of the house’s secrets literally come to life. Tormented by an insidious and violent presence, Lila finds herself trapped in a life increasingly filled with childhood terrors. It takes Cree’s unconventional take on psychology and her powerful natural empathy with Lila to navigate the dangerous worlds of spirit and memory, as they clash in a terrifying tale of mistaken identity and murder.

Land Of Echoes

In the end it is people, not places, that are haunted. Tommy Keeday is a talented student at a boarding school for gifted Navajo teens, located in the vast high desert of western New Mexico. When he is suddenly seized by an illness with bizarre and frightening symptoms, his family believes he is possessed by a chindi, the hostile spirit of a dead ancestor. But Julieta McCarty, the principal of Oak Springs School, is unwilling to accept either a traditional Navajo explanation or a conventional medical diagnosis. In desperation, she calls on Seattle based parapsychologist Cree Black. Nothing in Cree’s training as a clinical psychologist or her experience as a paranormal investigator has prepared her for the dangerous task of helping this brilliant boy in whom two spirits seem to battle. Is Tommy Keeday just a sensitive but troubled teenager, or is he suffering from an exotic brain disorder? Or is there truth in the terrifying Navajo legends of witches, skinwalkers, and malevolent ghosts? As Cree and her associates struggle to find the answer, it becomes apparent that there are secrets in the pasts of Tommy and the people around him, and that his fate can only be decided by exposing these unresolved longings and regrets. Drawing on in depth research and personal experience, Daniel Hecht’s latest novel, the second in the Cree Black series, is a thrillingly plausible supernatural mystery, a passionate love story, and a thoughtful exploration of Navajo culture and identity in modern America.

Bones of the Barbary Coast

In this thrilling novel set in two periods of San Francisco history, Cree Black confronts the mystery of one of the strangest victims of the Great Quake.

Bert Marchetti, an old family friend of Cree’s and an SFPD homicide inspector, has asked Cree to help investigate a human skeleton recently unearthed in the foundation of a fine Victorian home apparently the bones of a victim of the 1906 earthquake. The bones have been sent to UC Berkeley for analysis, where their peculiar characteristics have intrigued the forensic anthropology team. They call the skeleton Wolfman.
Who was the wolfman? What caused his anatomical deformities, and how did he end up in that grand hilltop home? Cree s historical research takes her back to the unholy glory days of the Barbary Coast, old San Francisco s infamous red light district. As she assists at the forensics lab, she also begins to realize that Bert Marchetti s involvement with the case is more complex than he has let on. Her narrative is illuminated by entries from the 1889 diary of Lydia Schweitzer, a Victorian woman with her own secrets and her own compelling interest in the person who would come to be known as the wolfman. A vivid and elegantly plotted thriller that reveals San Francisco s hidden face across two centuries, Bones of the Barbary Coast tells the story of two women determined to face human nature s darkest aspects with courage and compassion.

Skull Session

Back in print and accompanied by its prequel Puppets, the bestselling Skull Session is a classic tale of suspense. Despite his brilliance, Paul Skoglund hasn t held a steady job for years, partly because of his Tourette’s syndrome. When his eccentric, wealthy aunt asks him to take on the repairs of her magnificent hunting lodge, he is in no position to refuse. But then he finds that the rambling old house has been savagely vandalized: he discovers a scene of almost superhuman destruction, a violence mirrored by a series of disappearances and grisly deaths haunting the region. Paul delves into the wreckage, wondering what dark passion and what strength could cause such chaos. As state police investigator Mo Ford pursues the mystery through official channels, escalating events force Paul deeper into his family s past and into the darker aspects of his own nature.

Puppets

The thrilling prequel to the bestselling Skull Session, published for the first time in the United States.

The New Jersey State Police had started calling him Howdy Doody, after the famous TV puppet of the 1950s. Three people killed in northern New Jersey, then three in Manhattan and another in the Bronx, in a thirteen month period. And all of them hung up with strings attached to their limbs, like Puppets. Finally the murderer was caught in New York City. Or so it seems until State Police detective Mo Ford finds another victim, killed and arranged in exactly the same way. Is it a copycat crime, or did the police catch the wrong man? Mo’s theory about what happened soon expands to involve U.S. intelligence agencies and a horrific experiment with human beings. With so many forces behind the scenes, who is the real puppet master?

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