Night Music - Harrison Gradwell Slater

A while back I found a copy of Harrison Gradwell Slater's novel Night Music in our basement's freebie shelf. I had never heard of the author or the book before but it intrigued me. A blurb stated it was a mystery for Mozart lovers. Hmmm. Sounds good to me!

It was pretty good! I have to say the main drawback is it's length, almost five hundred pages. Egad!

Here's the story:

Matthew Pierce is a Mozart scholar. I won't say a "prominent" scholar because he's a little down on his luck and hasn't made his big break. While on a trip in Europe, he gets stuck in Milan and happens to see an estate sale. He notices, stuck between some other miscellanous papers, what appears to be parts of Mozart's diary. No one else had noticed so he get's the papers for next to nothing.

And then the whirlwind starts. He gets invited to a swanky event hosted by a Viscount in France on his estate. And this is a fancy fancy get together lasting weeks with some of the world's wealthiest and talented people: opera singers (of course), royalty, etc. And everyone has something to do Mozart. So of course there's gossip, masked balls, and of course....DEATH.

A few people wind up dead, there's scary threatening notes, and attempted murder. Of course there is. So Matthew Pierce needs to know a few things: 1) is his Mozart diary for real? 2) is his life in danger? 3) who is threatening the guests?

It was actually a pretty fun whirlwind mystery. I have to say Harrison Gradwell Slater knows his Mozart. I loved reading the diary pieces and it even inspired me to pop in and listen to some Mozart while reading parts of the book. I absolutely adored the European descriptions. He makes the cities and settings come alive. I loved that.

The only thing is that it drug a bit sometimes. And sometimes Matthew Pierce was so kowtowed (I had to look up how to spell that word...ha!) that I wanted to slap him upside the head. And like I said before, it's a bit too long.

But now it's got me all interested in the life of Mozart.

Here's the hard back cover. I'm a bit torn which version I like better.