Dead, Mr Mozart - Hardcover

Bastable, Bernard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031211771X ISBN 13: 9780312117719

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1995

Synopsis

It is London in 1820, and a certain down-at-the-heels Austrian musician who has been living in England for many years is about to get another chance. That musician is Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart - 64 years old, a Mason, the composer of such peerless operas as Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutte, whose work has not been receiving the renown and remuneration that it deserves. But the King has just died, and it is time to plan for the coronation of George IV - a suitable occasion for a major new opera. Surely this is the opportunity that Mozart has been waiting for, but plans for the coronation are not proceeding as smoothly as everyone had hoped in the face of the scandals swirling around the King and his estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick.
When Mozart discovers that his theater is at the center of a plot to discredit Caroline, he uneasily holds his tongue - until the machinations give way to murder, and Mozart's patron orders him to help dispose of the body. This is no work for a great musician, and Mozart is finally goaded to seek the truth behind the intrigues that left a poor servant girl dead on the dressing-room floor.
To Die Like a Gentleman, the first period mystery by Robert Barnard writing as Bernard Bastable, was called "sheer delight in the hands of a master of the genre" in a starred review from Kirkus. Now, in his second Bernard Bastable title, the author makes full use of his wit and creative powers in a brilliantly imagined tour de force, Dead, Mr. Mozart.

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Reviews

Caroline, wife of England's King George IV, is being investigated for her "adultery?and hence her treason." Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, still alive in London in 1820 in this alternative history, has been reduced to composing "curtain-raisers," supplementing his meager income by occasional service to the gentry. A bright spot enters the composer's life when Lord Hertford, an opera patron, persuades the theater to hire his protege, young soprano Betty Ackroyd. Upon learning the theater is involved in dangerous schemes touching on the royal squabbles, further complicated when a corpse is found in Ackroyd's dressing room, Mozart uneasily undertakes some quiet snooping. Bastable (To Die Like a Gentleman) keeps things moving, but, criminal acts and scandalous behavior notwithstanding, this is more curtain-raiser than grand opera.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As period mystery-writer Bastable, Robert Barnard introduced an aging Mozart as sleuth in To Die Like a Gentleman (St. Martin's, 1993). Now, in 1820 London, Mozart hopes that coronation preparations for George IV will offer him musical opportunities; instead, he finds himself mixed up in royal scandal and murder.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Popular British mystery writer Robert Barnard, in the second novel written under his nom de plume, Bernard Bastable, successfully borrows from political and musical history for an especially satisfying whodunit. As Bastable has it, famous composer Mozart spent his adult life in Britain, developed his career there, and didn't die young but, rather, lived into old age. The time is 1820, and mad old King George III has finally departed this world for a loftier throne and has been succeeded by his flamboyant heir, George IV. Mozart is uplifted by thoughts of composing a new opera for the occasion, but puts off such an endeavor after becoming embroiled in solving the murder of a young woman found backstage in the theater with which he is associated. It seems the murder is connected to the scandal that has accompanied the new king's ascension: the return to England of the king's wife, a profligate His Majesty is bound and determined to divorce rather than allow to share his throne. And it is up to Mozart to discover if and how the murder is related. A sophisticated, deeply compelling, and even humorous read. Brad Hooper

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 031211771X
• ISBN 13: 9780312117719
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 183