The Black Painting: A Novel

The Morse family has always had its secrets, but for cousins Kenny, James, Audrey, and Teresa, the family estate of Owl’s Point was a place of golden childhood summers, until the day that Grandfather’s prized Goya painting was stolen. Rumored to be cursed, the painting’s theft sent the threads of the Morse family into a slow unraveling. Now, years later, the cousins are summoned back to Owl’s Point by their grandfather, but any hopes of a reconciliation are dashed when Teresa finds him dead, his gaze fixed upon the spot where the Goya painting once hung, his face contorted in an expression of horror. As the rest of the family gathers, the mystery of the stolen painting is resurrected, along with dark secrets that have been kept for far too long.

The Black Painting is a gripping story due, in part, to the creepiness of the Goya painting, which is never actually described in any detail—a device that allows the reader to ponder what a painting rumored to cause madness and death might look like. My only complaint is that the Morse family secrets often feel overly alluded to, which removes a lot of their impact when they’re actually revealed.