Renowned artist Kate Kevy disappeared one summer from her blood-spattered studio on Ireland's rugged Beara Peninsula at the height of her career - leaving behind her horror film auteur husband, and their teenage triplets. Vanishing with her, a painting meant to define her legacy. Every clue to Kevy's whereabouts led nowhere.
Eight years later, as the triplets embark on their adult lives and the art world moves on, Kevy's husband has her declared dead. But when the painting that disappeared with her is found - completed - nobody's story about that summer seems to add up.
The family's former au pair, now poised to marry Kevy's husband, receives a terrifying visit from a dying man. An art scholar who dedicated his career to studying Kevy's work is lured to a private vault to uncover the painting's secrets. And a disgraced journalist who sees the lingering suspicion against Kevy's husband as a way to rebuild her career receives a cryptic message from a woman in distress.
Where has the painting been? Why did Kate Kevy disappear? And is she still alive?
From the windswept coast of West Cork, to the locked vaults of Geneva, to a centuries-old apartment in Paris, The Death Mask is a labyrinth of secrets and complicity that asks whether the price of creative obsession can be fatal.