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THE DEVIL'S HARMONY by Sarah Rayne

THE DEVIL'S HARMONY

by Sarah Rayne

Pub Date: Feb. 2nd, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8988-1
Publisher: Severn House

The Nick and Nora of music research probe the mystery of the vanished Chopin Library and its deadly legacy.

Elderly professor Ernest Liripine and Dr. Theo Purslove are excited to receive an old scrapbook sent by Dr. Liripine’s former student Nina Randall, who’s currently working in Warsaw. The book provides links to the storied Chopin Library, which was presumably destroyed by the Nazis, and to a subgenre of music euphemistically called “Dark Cadence”—that is, execution music. Is this just one of the eerie myths surrounding the Library? They decide to consult music researcher Phineas Fox and Arabella Tallis, his ladylove and sidekick. Flashbacks take the story intermittently back to 1918 as two young women named Katya and Zena hide in a large, elaborate home. Rayne attenuates the suspense with a slow reveal of their location and their plight. They’re in imperial Russia, connected to Czar Nicholas and his family. As Phin and Arabella decipher more documents, Lucek Socha, who heads the archive office in Warsaw, contemplates a romance with Nina and recalls his unsettling upbringing by his artistic aunt Helena. These eerie reminiscences are developed along with the other narrative threads to produce a mosaic of the rise and fall of the Library during World War II. Despite the strenuous attempts to bring all the parts together, the novel reads more like an anthology. Still, Rayne writes with panache and imagination, especially about relationships. Phin and Arabella have luscious chemistry, and the elderly academics bicker with courtly drollery.

A chocolate box of classical music, banter, historic tidbits, and spooky stories.