Music is the theme of this delightful novel, a sequel to the author’s equally charming debut effort, “The Rainaldi Quartet,” which featured the luthier violin-repairer and -maker Giovanni Castiglione. This time, the mystery involves the violinist and composer Paganini, whose virtuosity and audacity provide Mr. Adams with a wealth of material to inform and entertain the reader.
Paganini’s violin, the famous “Cannon,” is kept in Genoa where it is provided every two years to the winner of a competition to play at a concert. The winner of the current competition, a young Russian virtuoso dominated, of course, by his mother, detects a flaw in the instrument which is brought to Giovanni to inspect and hopefully to repair. This transaction gives Giovanni the opportunity not only to befriend the young artist, providing one theme in this mystery, but to become involved in a couple of murders, the outgrowth of events in Paganini’s life.
When a visitor from Paris is found dead in his hotel room with a torn fragment of a musical score, detective Antonio Guastafeste asks his friend Giovanni for help, and the two go on to investigate not one but three murders and the reasons behind them. Along the way we are treated to such detail about violin making, the life of a child prodigy, and the history of Paganini’s career and life that we are almost overwhelmed (but joyfully entertained) in this fast-reading mystery. Highly recommended.
