Having relocated to Perth, cancer surgeon Aresh Mehta is preparing to settle down in life. Travelling with him is an unsigned painting that he came across – and kept – more than a decade earlier. Haunted by the violent scene it depicts, Aresh decides that the time has come for him to find out who painted it and if it has any value.
Local art experts cannot pinpoint the artist and choose instead to focus on a distinctive work of art, painted in miniature, and shown hanging on the wall of the plush suburban study in which the violence has been set.
The search into the origins of this small painting uncovers deep familial connections stretching from London to Melbourne and on to Sydney. And, as the investigation into the crime portrayed in Aresh’s painting advances, people determined to prevent the shocking truth from emerging are alerted, holding nothing back to avoid being exposed.
The Masked Ball is a story about the abiding strength of our attachment to the paintings we possess and to the stories that lie beneath their making.