Monday With Kaye: "The Mozart Conspiracy" by Scott Mariani (Reviewed by Kaye George)

Another Monday is made more bearable by another installment of Monday With Kaye. This week she reviews The Mozart Conspiracy by Scott Mariani.

The Mozart Conspiracy by Scott Mariani

We're getting this thriller late. It was published in England in 2008, but better late than never in this case. Mariani has built an elaborate plot on a quote attributed to Mozart shortly before his death. In the first scene, Oscar Llewellyn witnessed a horrific murder and, as a result, meets his death soon after. But not before he manages to send a message.

Nearly a year later, Oscar's beautiful opera singer sister, Leigh, inadvertently setting a deadly chain of events into motion, is forced to ask for help from retired SAS officer Benedict Hope, an old lover of hers, and someone she knows she should not become entangled with again. Benedict, a traitor only to the bad guys, helps Leigh go up against a man so sinister he stops egg-throwing rioters in their tracks with his icy gaze.

Madeleine Laurent, the wife of a diplomat, gives impeccable witness to having seen Oscar's drunken, accidental death, but all is not as it seems. At the heart of the mystery is research for a book on Mozart Oscar was writing. Neither he, before his death, nor Leigh, now deciding to finish his book, realize the implications of an old letter Oscar discovered. A letter that mentions an ancient secret society that is surely now dead.

The other hero of the story, Detective Sergeant Markus Minski, knows something wasn't right about the drowning death of Oscar, but can't put his finger on it. Until the hornet's nest of conspiracy stirred up by Ben and Leigh threatens those dear to him, including his own young daughter.

The story is told, in the beginning, with alternating flashbacks that fill in the history and characters of Oscar, Leigh, and Ben while we're meanwhile racing headlong into threats of disaster and death. Throw in the political campaign of Philippe Aragon, the youngest ever candidate for vice presidency of the European Commission, opposed by swastika waving neo-Fascists among others, and you're off on a breathtaking ride through England and Europe.

Reviewed by Kaye George, Author of A Patchwork of Stories for Suspense Magazine