The Black Painting by Neil Olson

Eh. Not a must-read, but interesting enough to get me to finish it, albeit slowly.

I grabbed this on a whim on a trip to WHPL with my son.

Know that meme about crazy--something like "in this family we don't hide crazy, we invite it on the porch and offer it lemonade" or some such thing?  This family is that dysfunctional.

Old rich man, a widower (but who's been sleeping with the maid most of his marriage), thinks a painting by Goya has a magical dark powers.  The painting was stolen on the day of his wife's funeral.  His 2 sons and daughter are a disappointment to him and his 4 grandchildren worse.  In his will, the only way the grandkids get $250,000 each is to complete a self-fixing task (gay man has to marry and father a child, for example).  The rest of the money gets left to he housekeeper. 

It was pretty obvious who was sleeping with whom and the significance of a patched over spot in the wine cellar fairly early in the book.  It was also pretty obvious these spoiled, rich brats all need a good smack upside the head, which is probably why I didn't care for any of them anyway.

Not a recommend.

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