Black Valley A Novel

Jessica Mayhew has enough problems without getting wrapped up in her patients' drama. Her separation from her husband doesn't seem as amicable as she once thought, and her daughters are drifting away as fast as they're growing up. But her new client—chic, moody, obsessive painter Elinor Powell—has a way of drawing people in, and soon Jessica's getting involved with what seems to be a most artful murder. Elinor blames herself for keeping a valuable portrait in her studio, where her mother was killed in an unsolved robbery. A bout of claustrophobia is interfering with her work, as is her deepening paranoia about her twin sister, Isobel, and her brother-in-law, Blake, a ruthless art dealer. But when Jessica meets the entire unhappy family at the debut show of Blake's protégé—a reclusive ex-miner producing startling canvases in the Black Mountains of southeast Wales—she starts to wonder whether Elinor might be on to something. Might there be more to her mother's death? Could Blake have been involved? And just what's going on in those lonely hills? Eerie and grippingly suspenseful, Black Valley is a novel rich in character, intrigue, and harrowing dangers.