Picture of Evil

I think this was recommended to me on the basis of my having enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray. Well, both stories have an evil painting, true. And maybe the titular Picture of Evil works the same way -- I don't know, because I couldn't get past page 60. This reads as though Masterton reached into a grab-bag of really tired clichés and just pulled them out by the fistful. Two or three would have been fine, but honestly, every single character and every single interaction was 100% predictable. Between the boredom and the gore, I just gave up.

One of the more fascinating, innovative plots ever - I couldn't put the book down and even now, 20 years later, it still stand in my Top 5 Favorite horror reads. Masterton is a Master of Horror!

As always Graham Masterton delivers for me. I always find his books fast-paced, creepy, sometimes really scary but have never read a bad one yet.

Back Cover Blurb:
From the chateau country of France to the upper-class enclaves of Connecticut come Cordelia and her brother Maurice. Rich, elegant and sophisticated, their sensual beauty is irresistable.
The hunger is hideous. The price is blood-drenched horror. The only hope: destroy the painted canvas from which the Grays gain their unnatural strength. That canvas holds another world of horror for the innocents who stand between the Grays and the Picture of Evil.

NIL

Vincent Pearson vit une vie tranquille a New York ou il tient une galerie de peintures. Mais bientot, cette vie paisible va etre troublée (le mot est faible) par une série de crimes qui, s'ils n'ont a priori aucun rapport entre eux, ont tous la particularité de toucher des personnes qu'il connait, de pres ou de loin. Petit a petit, il va se rendre compte qu'une sorte de Mal latent plane au-dessus de lui, et au-dessus d'un tableau que sa famille possede depuis des générations : 'Portrait de Famille' peint par un certain Walter Waldegrave, ami d'Oscar Wilde. Le tableau représente une famille dont les visages semblent se désagreger au fur et a mesure que le tableau vieilli...