A novella with exquisite chills
Susan Hill went to the top of my chart of greatest contemporary mystery writers when I first read her novel The Woman in Black. The image of the shadowy, malign woman stayed with me long after I'd closed the book.
But her novella The Man in the Picture has far more resonance for me personally as its subject is Venice, the setting for several of my own books. As I've written a number of times in my novels, Venice can be a wonderful sunny place but it can also be a place of great darkness, and this story epitomizes more than any other, the true nature of the evil that can lurk behind a mask; the disparity between appearance and reality, the beautiful face of the city hiding her dark heart.
The eponymous picture is of a Venetian Carnevale scene, featuring a crowd of masked characters by the Grand Canal. It hangs in the rooms of an elderly Cambridge Don, Theo, who begins the story by revealing the secret of the picture to his young pupil Oliver. His revelations will go on to change Oliver's life in an exquisitely sinister sequence of events. No spoilers here; for the secret of the painting's evil power is the chilling central spine of the book.
One of the most striking things about the book is how clearly you see the evil painting, in exquisite detail, as if it is hanging before your eyes; even though none of the editions that I have read featured an imagining of the picture as cover art. The skill lies solely in the author's deeply evocative description. As happens in my favourite horror movie, Ringu, just being in the presence of a malign artwork infects the lives of those who view it with utter evil. And because it is a novella, it's possible to read this chilling little book in one winter's evening by the fire. Just don't read it when you're alone in the house. 
Marina Fiorato's latest book is The Daughter of Siena (St. Martin's Griffin, May 2011).
This "Writers on Reading" essay was originally published in "At the Scene" eNews May 2011 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.
