Wesley Stace is a brilliant and intensely original writer and this is his most unusual book yet -- Audrey Niffenegger We might have predicted that Wesley Stace - a fine novelist and a fine musician - would one day write a novel about music, but could we have predicted that it would be so brilliant? The dialogue sparkles, the prose glimmers, and for once you leave a novel not just haunted by the characters and the story, but humming the tunes. A delightful Opus 3 -- Jonathan Coe A tremendously imaginative novel... beneath its sparkling surface there are some very murky depths. A wonderfully disquieting read -- Sarah Waters Nothing in recent fiction prepared me for the power and the polish of this subtle tale of English music in the making, a chiller wrapped in an enigma * New Stateman * His handling of dry comic dialogue and cynical affectation is reminiscent of P. G. Wodehouse... an intelligent, fun and thoughful piece of fiction * Independent on Sunday * As quick-witted and clever as its predecessors... An entertainment of unusual class and penetration. And the tunes are great * Daily Telegraph * Imaginative exploration of the era -- Ludovic Hunter-Tilney * Financial Times * The whodunit is a mere pretext for witty debate * New Yorker * Subtle, funny and chilling, this delicious novel of music and murder unfolds among composers and critics of the 1910s and 1920s. Stace plays his deadly variations with real brio in a richly entertaining performance * i * A baroque intellectual thriller, wittily erudite and psychologically acute. Jessold joins Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkühn and Randall Jarrell's Gottfried Rosenbaum in the gallery of memorable composers in fiction -- Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise
