Playing With Fire ~ by Tess Gerritsen – 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Italy, Massachusetts, Musicians, Mystery, The Holocaust

 I received this e-Arc from NetGalley and Ballantine Books in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: October 27th, 2015

Synopsis: The first time Julia Ansdell picks up “The Incendio Waltz”, she knows it’s a strikingly unusual composition. But while playing the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her young daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence. And when she travels to Venice to find the previous owner of the music, she uncovers a dark secret that involves dangerously powerful people–a family who would stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light.

Tess Gerritsen is well known for her contemporary mystery series, Rizzoli and Isles, but Playing With Fire bears absolutely no resemblance to that, although there is a mystery involved. Instead, she’s interwoven the discovery of a mysterious piece of music in the present, with the nightmarish events in World War II Italy. The result is a haunting tale of two people separated by decades, connected only by their love of music.

The chapters alternate between Julia, who is a professional violinist in the present day, with Lorenzo Todesco, a young Jewish musician trying to survive in Mussolini’s Italy. Julia is happily married and is the mother of an adorable three-year-old daughter. While in Rome she stumbles across a piece of music which mysteriously calls out to her. Arriving back home with it she plays it and her daughter immediately starts committing horrific acts of violence. Is there some sort of connection or is Julia losing her mind like her mother? Julia is a such a sympathetic character. Content with her life, she grows increasingly confused and worried as everything she knows starts to unravel. Convinced that events are not in her mind, she’s determined to discover the history behind The Incendio and save her daughter. 

In 1938 Venice Lorenzo, who is also a violinist, comes from a well respected family of musicians. He’s an earnest young man who is devoted to his music, and is also experiencing falling in love for the very first time. His whole life is ahead of him, but he’s Jewish, in fascist Italy, and what ultimately happens to him and his family is heartbreaking. 

Both the present day mystery involving Julia, and the historical chapters following Lorenzo are wonderfully written, but it was Lorenzo’s story which ultimately captured my attention. I knew that Jews in Italy were rounded up during this time as part of Mussolini’s partnership with Hitler, but I had no idea the extent of the atrocities. I wound up reading these thought-provoking passages with my kleenex box next to me. The present day mystery is intriguing, and the outcome took me completely by surprise. My only problem was I felt the ending was a little rushed. Up until the last couple of chapters, the mystery of Incendio and how it connects two people separated by decades was compelling and mesmerizing, but then near the end everything is wrapped up so suddenly it was rather jarring.

Overall, The Incendio Waltz is a hauntingly beautiful tale which will resonate with you long after you’ve finished. Tess Gerritsen has proven she is a master storyteller who can successfully move beyond her usual police procedurals. Despite it only being 288 pages long, this is not a light read. It’s both powerful and painful and will leave you unsettled. However, I think it’s a story that you’ll be glad you read. 

Revival ~ By Stephen King -4.5 Stars

Tags

Horror Fiction, Life After Death, Musicians, Religion, Science, Substance Abuse

 “In one way, at least, our lives are like movies. The main cast consists of your family and friends. The supporting cast is made up of neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and daily acquaintances. There are also bit players: the supermarket checkout girl with the pretty smile, the friendly bartender at the local watering hole, the guys you work out with at the gym three days a week. And there are the thousands of extras — those people who flow through every life like water through a sieve, seen once and never again. The teenager browsing graphic novels at the bookstore, the one you had to slip past (murmuring ‘Excuse me’) in order to get to the magazines. The woman in the next lane at a stoplight, taking a moment to freshen her lipstick. The vendor who sold you a bag of peanuts at a baseball game. But sometimes a person who fits none of these categories comes into your life. This is the joker who pops out of the deck at odd intervals over the years, often during a moment of crisis. In the movies this sort of character is known as the fifth business.”

Thus begins Stephen King’s latest novel. For Jamie Morton, his fifth business, or nemesis as it were, is the Reverend Charles Daniel Jacobs. He first meets the charismatic preacher when he is six years old and the two form an instant bond. Over the next three years the Reverend, his wife, and young son become fixtures in the small community of Harlow, Maine. Then one fateful day the unimaginable occurs. An unspeakable tragedy that will not only cause Reverend Jacobs to lose his faith, but also will send him and Jamie on a collision course which concludes with a horrific act beyond imagination. Some doors are better left unopened.

I finished Revival last night around 7:00 pm and was left so stunned I couldn’t put a string of coherent words together in order to review it. First, let me warn you not to finish this within a couple of hours of when you’re going to bed. You will either not be able to sleep, or you’ll have some truly nasty nightmares. That said, the majority of this book does not really fall under the genre of horror. Indeed, it’s pure Americana, from 1950s small town Maine, to the carnival circuit in the Midwest, to finally landing back in present day Maine where the true horror takes place in the last thirty something pages. The way Jamie’s and Jacobs’ lives develop over five decades, for better or for worse, is vintage King, which is why I loved this book so much. Both men are shaped by the tragedies in their lives and not for the better. Jacobs sets out on an obsessive and destructive path which winds up effecting so many lives, while Jamie is only set on destroying his own, yet once the two meet again when Jamie is an adult the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Jamie is a wonderful, albeit flawed hero whose life is defined by his experiences. You cannot help but sympathize with him even when he’s making the worst decisions. I also wondered if King put a little of himself in Jamie with his addictions and love of classic rock. Reverend Jacobs who begins as a sympathetic character ultimately lets his experiences shape him into a true monster. As this story unfolds you also are introduced to the main cast and the supporting cast who are almost as fascinating as Jamie and Jacobs. Without either the events that play out would never come to fruition. The actual “horror” at the end of the book is a decided homage to two classic writers of that genre, and it’s brilliantly done. When King is at his best, his stories are tapestries where all of the threads are interwoven, finally coming together in one spectacular picture, and this is what he has created with Revival. I’ve tried not to put any real spoilers in this review because if you’re going to read this book I honestly think you should do so with no preconceived notions. Hopefully I’ve succeeded in giving you a tantalizing peek instead.