Customer Reviews

The Devil in Music (Kestrel 4)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a superb mystery. I just recently became acquainted with the books of Kate Ross, who recently died. Readers will enjoy the dramatic atmosphere of a villa on Lake Como and the welldrawn characters. Music lovers will also get a thrill out of this, because the plot focuses on opera singers and an unsolved murder. Julian Kestrel, a delightful aristocrat with an unusual past, and Dipper, his valet, travel to Italy to solve the mysterious death of a nobleman, who was a passionate lover of the opera. They are looking for the vanished tenor, Orpheo, who is suspected of the murder. Kestrel reminds me quite a bit of the Scarlet Pimpernel character.He is charming and a true gentleman, accompanied by his valet, of course. He becomes entranced with the lovely widow of the murdered nobleman and this romantic theme runs throughout the book. This combines plenty of melodrama and action. The reader will feel as they had gone back in time. This was one of the best historical mysteries I have read in a long time. Enjoy!

An Italian nobleman is murdered in 1821, but the authorities announce the death as a heart attack, fearing political unrest if the truth were known. It takes four more years before the true cause of death is revealed, even to the deceased's wife.

Julian Kestrel, an English "dandy" (and apparently in those days the word was not a disparagement), is traveling on the continent, and decides to try his hand at solving the murder. He is apparently experienced at such things, having been the hero of three (?) previous books by Ms. Ross, which I haven't read. So he travels to Italy, along with his somewhat curmudgeonly friend Dr. MacGregor, inveigles his way into the inner circle of the widow, and begins to detect.

Ross does a fine job of portraying the post-Napoleonic period in northern Italy, as its political intrigues run rampant even while the rich and famous are enjoying their operas, their villas, and other perquisites of their status. The murder plot is one of the most complex I have ever encountered in a mystery (and I have read hundreds of them). In fact, once the murder is solved and all the "good guys" rescued from danger, it still requires another 40 pages to explain all the events in the story. Those last 40 pages strike me as very slightly clumsy, as Julian goes from person to person, interviewing them all until every t has been crossed and every i dotted. Perhaps Ross didn't realize until she got to that point in the story, that there were dozens of loose ends to be tied up.

But the writing is excellent, the characters well drawn, and the motivations plausible. And again, the portrayal of the Italian society in that time period is particularly vivid and enjoyable. I second the grief of the previous reviewer who expressed disappointment upon learning of the death of the author, who apparently died while still in her early 40's. This book definitely made me want to go back and read the other Julian Kestrel novels, and I'm sorry that there won't be any more of them.

"The Devil in Music", a wonderful Regency mystery set in Italy during the 1820s, is packed with well-drawn, complex characters and a plot that will keep the reader guessing until the end. The basics of the story: an Italian nobleman is murdered, the suspect a mysterious English tenor with the nom de plume "Orfeo" who has disappeared. Julian Kestral, the hero of previous adventures, decides to investigate the death five years later, leading to multiple suspects and surprises. The best part, in this reviewer's opinion, is the emphasis Ross puts on the historical background of Italy in the post-Napoleonic era: the treachery, the underground independence movements, the Austrian domination. Ross even lets the reader know the differences between the Italian dialects of the region. All in all, if you want murder, romance, and a taste of the Regency period, you couldn't do better than this novel, a "cut" above most examples of it's genre -- pun intended.

The fourth and, I think, finest of Ross's Julian Kestrel mysteries takes Julian, his ex-fingersmith (as in, highly gifted pickpocket) valet, Dipper, and their friend Dr. McGregor far from their usual British haunts and plops them into pre-unification, Austrian-controlled Italy. A four-year-old murder mystery, centering on a vanished tenor known only as Orfeo, unfolds on a backdrop of music, high society, politics, and intrigue. The musical details are precise and accurate, while the Milanese dialect that creeps in lends flavor and atmosphere. Characters/suspects include a Frenchman with unbelieveably perfect pitch (the ability to name notes by ear), a castrato (male soprano - you figure it out), the brother, son, wife, and estranged daughter-in-law (she ran away with the castrato) of the victim, Orfeo's blind voice teacher, various and sundry police and military officials, servants, and musicians. Throw in the Carbonari (Italians fighting for reunification) and there are explosions just waiting to be touched off. The conclusion is completely satisfying, and though part of it may leave you saying "I knew it all along" the other is almost completely unexpected - and I'm not even talking about the murderer. I was devastated to learn the author had passed away - once I get hooked on a series I like to see it continue ad infinitum - but this makes a fitting conclusion to Kestrel's recorded adventures, and it's by far the longest of the four as well. I highly recommend the entire series.

While I generally avoid books in excess of 400 pages, I decided to try this one based on all the positive comments from other readers. I was not disappointed!

Multiple suspects, great characters, a wonderful atmosphere, and of course, revelations and many twists.

All of the characters are wonderfully developed, so much that I could attach faces to the descriptions. The setting made me think of Dumas and the Three Musketeers, and the relationship between the detective and his travelling partner brought to mind Sherlock Holes and Dr. Watson. The twists, turns, and revelations actually seemed plausible and in case somewhat foreshadowed. However, the ending completely caught me off guard (which was a good thing). There are so many characters and so many possible motives that the reader will be kept guessing.

A long book, but very involving and well written. I am going to try another by the author.

Kate Ross left us far too early, but as the reviewer below stated, she did leave us with Julian Kestrel. And for that, we are grateful.

What an amazing fourth book. Unlike the previous three in the series, this one does not take place in England, but in Italy. The ending was as surprising a twist as any twist I've read in recent memory. The plot is rich, the characters are colorful, the dialogue wonderful, and Julian is once again the character you stand up and cheer for. Please do not be put off by the thickness of the book. The pages fly by and when it's finished, you'll find yourself wanting more.

These are the Julian Kestrel books in chronological order:

Cut to the Quick
A Broken Vessel
For Whom the Gods Love
The Devil in Music

I heartily recommend this series to everybody, not just historical mystery fans.

I first found Kate Ross when I read her book, CUT TO THE QUICK, and have read all her other books. It is truly a shame that she has passed away. Her books are among the most well-written and intellectually challenging in this genre. As I read THE DEVIL IN MUSIC, I was fascinated by the plot twists and how deftly she tied everything together. This was her best effort. I am sorry that we won't have more Julian Kestrel adventures in the future.

Julian Kestrel's past is only one of the mysteries the reader has to figure out in this wonderful evocation of early 19th century Northern Italy. Filled with politics, humor, passion, opera and vendetta, this book will keep the reader guessing until the very last few pages. Nothing is coincidental, and each revelation only leads to more, and all is accompanied by the glorious music of Rossini. I have read that Kate Ross died unfortunately in 1996 and so the few Julian Kestrel mysteries we have are all there are, which is a shame. I found this book completely compelling.

I have been following threads in mystery-fan groups about historical mysteries (i.e., modern mysteries set in the past that try to apply detection and fair-play in a situation where they would not likely have occurred). Many objections to this are basically trivial, that there are no 'forsooths' or attempts at period language -- to which I say, every era has its own slang and vulgar language, why try to reproduce it authentically (apart from a few nice bits of historical cant, well-represented here by Dipper's argot) rather than just write the book as though it had been translated into modern language from Sanskrit or whatever? The important thing is to get the history right factually, or as factual as can be when discussing items that are still controversial among historians. Harder is to present the different mind-sets of typical people of the era. Greed, love, revenge, etc. as usual are behind all crimes, but how these were regarded by the populace generally, and by those responsible for law enforcement in particular are not always well presented, and 'anachronistic' thoughts by the detective are a hazard. Ross avoids these pitfalls in this book. A nice contrast between those two lines of thought is provided by contrasting Kestrel with the official police detective Grimani, who serves as the Lestrade of this book to Kestrel's Holmes.

In any case, I finally got hold of Kate Ross's "Devil in Music," the last of the four books in her Regency detective Julian Kestrel series (shamefully hard to find except on-line). She died in her forties, a real pity since the books were getting better and better. This is a wonderful book, although many detective-story purists will hate it because it can't be defined as belonging to any particular genre: Regency Romance, Spy Novel, Detective Story, Thriller, etc. It has all of those elements, plus being a 'Ripping Yarn' (James Bond and the like). In a way, the title reminiscent of John Dickson Carr's "Devil in Velvet" was probably intentional on the author's part, although the settings and background are entirely different. The plot is a phantasmagoria of different elements, combining Gothic situations with comic-strip twists, turns, and cliff-hangers.

What I found interesting was the setting, early 19th Century, pre-Victorian, an age when Jefferson had already done his thing in America, Napoleon had been defeated, technology was burgeoning (and, yes, there was a technology explosion back then that was just as influential in changing society then as atom bombs, space shuttles, and computers have been in our era). This was a very interesting period in history, and much more amenable for presentation to a modern reader of mystery fiction -- as opposed to Ancient Egypt or societies we can hardly conceive of as to what made them tick in day-to-day life, beyond eating, sex, and earning a living. The politics and religion are especially hard to convey. This period works, because common themes of so-called Western Civilization in its current form were already in circulation or under development, so we can understand the 'radical' heros; but it also has the added virtue that the old feudal system had not vanished -- God and the King, and the local duke or marquis or whatever, had not been supplanted by CEO's of big corporations.

The novel (a long one) is set in Northern Italy in the mid-1820s, with of course epigraphs from Byron, a perfect example of the type of person Julian Kestrel is. A lot of it involves early Grand Opera (at La Scala in Milan) and culture of that sort; a lot of politics -- Napoleon's puppet states had been destroyed and the old overlords, the Austrians, had been restored [they got their comeupance when the Dolomite provinces of Austria were ceded to Italy after WWI] -- and the radical Carbonaris were causing all sorts of problems; and a lot of the Italian morality of the times, where adultery was a commonplace of high society, an expected thing, like owning a Maserati, but to seduce a virgin of 'gentle birth' was anathema. Best of all, this is a classic melodrama of the Italian sort, like many of the operas, where improbabilities pile on improbabilities but are always supported by a great aria. This fascination with the Matter of Italy dates back as far as Shakespeare and earlier among English speakers, Borgia and Medici and Machiavelli being buzz words (although they were probably not much worse than Idi Amin). That is why, in my opinion, this is the best of the Ross books. The others were set in Regency England, with Bow Street Runners and the like -- and we've had enough examples of that!

Kate Ross's body of work may be small - only four Julian Kestrel novels - but it stands up to the greats of the genre. All the Kestrel novels are rewarding reads and this is the best of the four. As much about the passionate love of music as passionate love itself and what it can drives us to do, The Devil in Music is fine mystery, a fine comedy of manners and a great novel. Kate Ross left us too soon; thankfully she left us with Julian Kestrel.