Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

The Man in the Picture

Customer Rating:

An enjoyable novella, marred by occasionally clumsy prose. It reads a little too much like a first draft. The plot is good but there are instances such as the revelation that Oliver has a girlfriend who he intends to marry. She is important to the plot but the fact that she is only mentioned as we get to the final chapters makes her feel tacked on. I also found it difficult to work out when the book was set. It feels very old-fashioned which I have no problem with but the mention of a mobile phone near the end feels out of place. Not as good as her other ghost stories.

A terrifically chilling mystery

Customer Rating:

The "Man in the Picture" is a novella that concerns a Cambridge student who visits his professor and old friend at the university. In the course of the meeting, the two discuss a painting of a Venetian ball the old man bought many years ago, the terrible secrets it keeps and the inevitable consequences for those who discover who is the man in the picture... A clever ghost story, "The Man in the Picture" may be short, but Susan Hill, having already shown her expertise in the format with "The Woman in Black" and "The Mist in the Mirror," delivers a finely-tuned, masterfully constructed supernatural mystery. A sense of dread permeates every page and the unrelenting pace will leave you breathless right up until the horribly disquieting finale. Hill reaffirms her position as a peerless exponent of a neglected genre with this elegant masterpiece. Excellent and highly recommended.

No shivers up this spine

Customer Rating:

Not having read any other books by Hill, I cannot comment upon how THE MAN IN THE PICTURE stands up against her other works. I came to the book hoping for a chilling ghost story; something I always look out for at this time of year. But, like many others on Amazon, I have come away from it more disappointed than chilled to the bone. The book has at its heart the story of a woman scorned, looking for revenge, and a Venetian painting which seems to have a remarkable power to help her in her search. I appreciate that the genre of ghost stories is perhaps one of the most challenging for a writer to get right. Atmosphere has to be built up, and in this instance, Hil had to try and create a story which, although supernatural, had to have a feel of the possible to it. Overall, Hill has managed to succeed at this. However, I did not find it as chilling as the reviews suggest - there were no shivers up my spine and I could easily read it before bed without the threat of nightmares keeping me up! Perhaps though, this disappointment on my behalf is due to not being used to her writing style - perhaps the sense of dread she creates is more subtle than that. While I may have been let down by this particular book, I shall probably look out for her other book, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, to see how they compare.

I've been more scared getting lost in lakeside

Customer Rating:

I was very disappointed with this book, it started off really well but just seemed to evaporate into nothing, the story was ok but nothing was really explained and it wasn't scary either! the story wasn't in anyway spine tingling, infact it feel flat on it's face, very disappointing and even more so for the fact that it's a very thin paperback (I read it in a day) and it cost me £6.99 !!! not worth it at all !!!

Great start but then...	Customer Rating:
Not as good as the "Woman in Black". It starts (very) well but the plot loses direction at the middle and the becomes downright silly in the end. A good ghost story requires suspension of disbelief. It is an indictement of the plot that the disbelief occurs at the final actions of the protagonists rather than the manifestation of the supernatural.