Portrait of a Girl
Amazon.com
My review -
This
is the second of the author’s horror stories and it takes me back to the kind
of Dennis Wheatley books I devoured in my younger days. There’s that sense of menace
throughout the story. The hapless Mr Jones, who was hounded by the police when
he was an innocent victim in The Showing, is once again drawn into something he
cannot control. A portrait of a girl in the local art gallery draws him almost
hypnotically and he even begins to dream of it. He goes in to ask the price but
it’s far more than he can afford. He leaves his details as an expression of
interest, and then, when a young man goes missing and was last seen in the
vicinity of the gallery, the police pay their first call upon Mr Jones. More
young men fall under the portrait’s baleful influence and once again, Mr Jones
has to convince the police he’s not to blame.
This
is an engrossing and thoughtful study of a man in the grip of an obsession which
has drawn lesser men into peril of their lives. He has the help of a friend to
offer him some protection from a very real menace older than them all, and it’s
a story which keeps on moving right to the end. Christmas is the time for ghost
stories. Draw the curtains, settle down and give this a try!
I
received a review copy of this book.
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