Harrison Gradwell Slater

Yet another novel by an academic and one who is steadily still going through adolescence. This time the Dan Brownish mystery du jour revolves around a diary supposedly written by Mozart found in what appeared to be a worthless binder at an otherwise fancy auction in Italy. A good looking academic with a vast knowledge of anything Mozart but who is otherwise unrecognized and under appreciated, finds what appear to be genuine pages written by Mozart documenting his travels through Europe. Our protagonists wants to sell the documents because he's poor, he wants to get them authenticated because he's misunderstood and he wants ... a lot of things he can't figure out. Sex is one of those and we are overloaded with misplaced sex on every page. After one quarter into the book I was sick and tired of reading yet another 'supple' or 'purring'.

We find a lot of irony in this novel. Even though all the historical data is tight and very convincing, the description of people and events are so incredibly ridiculous that you can't even laugh about them. For example, after a horrific murder takes place at the estate in France (Nancy) where Pierce is staying, the host decides to move the entire batch of guests to Venice. By limousine. If you map that out in Google maps then you see that this takes at least about 8 or 9 hours. Who in their right and sane minds would write a narrative in which a very very rich French aristocrat would move around 20 high profile guests from France to Italy by limousine?

You have to wonder what Harrison Gradwell Slater was thinking when he wrote it, perhaps he was reading various articles in Playboy in between his Mozart research? Every character is either female and more astonishing than anything airbrushed we can currently find on glamour magazines, or male and ugly or male and reprehensible (or both). It could be said that the characters are flat, but that would be giving them a lot more credit for their predictable behavior than they deserve.… (mais)