Blake and his wife have had some rocky times but are doing their best to raise their young son and forget the past in a rural cottage in the country.
One day While Blake and Ricky are having some father son time together they find an old picture frame buried on the property. Ricky wants to keep it and soon has it cleaned up and looking good as new. However unfortunate incidents begin to occur immediately afterwards.
This was a short and spooky read and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a horror story without excessive gore. Even if it did irk me a bit that nobody would consider getting medical attention or rabies shots after being bitten by a wild animal. I suppose horror doesn't always have to make perfect sense.

I received a complimentary copy for review ( )

Cursed objects can be in the most innocent of things, but who is to say that an ordinary picture frame would be cursed? This was the second book I have read by this author and I wasn't disappointed.

A little backstory for you readers.

Blake Pierce a/k/a mystery author along with his family move out to the country to get away from the city life. Blake wants to try to spend more time with his family and wants to do some different things with his son. Blake has always been interested in finding little treasures in the earth so he takes his son out with a metal detector to see what they can unearth.

When they dig up an old picture frame his son wants to put a picture of the family dog inside, but little does he know that now he has started a chain of events which will bring all of them to the brink of terror. What really kickstarts the curse is when Blake's wife decides to put a picture of them together in the frame.

What has cursed the frame? What happens when pictures are put into the frame? Can Blake and his family break the curse? No spoilers here as you will just have to read the book!

This was a grabber right from the beginning of the book as things happen right away and then it escalates into a terror filled ride.

Nail biting tension and fast paced horror had me reading this late into the night! Four stars for this one.
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Blake Price sold his home and moved his family to the English countryside under mysterious circumstances. Eager to get away from the “bad things” found in city life, he is sure his wife and 10-year-old son Ricky will find a new, safer life in their cottage.

While wandering the countryside with a Geiger counter, he and Ricky unearth a strange looking, old picture frame that doesn’t appear to have suffered any of the ravages of time. Thrilled with the find Ricky places a picture of his dog Bailey into it and, within moments of doing so, Bailey is dead.

After replacing the photo with a family portrait, strange accidents begin to occur to everyone in the picture. It seems too bizarre to believe, but Blake soon learns that a man named Oscar Boruta has put a curse on his family. Oscar was killed in 1928 but seems to be calling out from the grave for revenge. With nowhere to turn, and with the curse gaining in strength, Blake will have to figure out how to save his family before it’s too late.

“The Picture Frame” is a quick read but was a little too predictable and had a few too many loose ends, along with some grammatical errors. I would have liked to learn more details about how/why the frame was cursed so, perhaps the author would consider writing a prequel in which the story of the picture frame is told from Oscar’s point of view.

Recommended for Adult readers.

Blog review link: https://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/the-picture-frame-iain-rob-w... ( )

Blake Price is a famous thriller writer (apparently the most famous mystery writer since Agatha Christie) who leaves the city and takes his family to a lonely countryside hideaway after his wife Liz suffers a horrific attack by a disturbed fan of his work. One day Blake and his son Ricky, while out playing with a metal detector, find an old picture frame in the ground close to their home. They dig it up, take it home and subsequently clean it up. Unfortunately it is a cursed artificial and a deadly fate awaits anyone whose photograph is placed in the frame. "The Picture Frame" is a decent enough yarn that starts well with an intriguing premise, some decent characters and a nice building up of suspense. It loses its way from the halfway mark, however, when author Iain Robb Wright begins to flesh out the characters with psychological depth to help explain their actions and motivations. None of this attempted characterisation rings particularly true and begins to make an initially decent set of characters annoying and overly self-obsessed. The story also loses a bit of its mystery and intrigue when Wright begins to provide a background for the picture frame and the village. Wright's writing is, however, crisp and clear and the story has a decent pace and momentum to it. The story, perhaps, runs a little long for what is in essence a "haunted object" yarn and with some judicious editing and closer focus this could have been a pretty strong tale rather than the rather average one it turned into. Despite that there was always enough of interest in the tale and in the characters to ensure that I read all the way to the end. ( )