The Devil in Music

The venerated maestro of historical mystery, Kate Ross, returns with her Regency dandy and amateur sleuth, Julian Kestrel, for a fourth mystery this tame far from London, in the sensuous, murderous Italy of the 1820s

Four years ago, the Italian Lodovico Malvezzi was murdered, and Orfeo, the young English tenor he had been training for a career on the glittering operatic stage, disappeared. Kestrel, traveling on the Continent with his ex-pickpocket valet, is irresistibly drawn into the baffling case. He encounters suspects at every turn: a runaway wife and her male soprano lover; a liberal nobleman at odds with Italy's Austrian overlords; a mocking Frenchman with perfect pitch: a beautiful, clever widow who haunts Kestrel's dreams: and the missing Orfeo, the penniless protege who just might be a political agent. And when the killer strikes again, Kestrel's quest for answers spirals into a crescendo of passion, danger, and music as he risks becoming a ruthless murderer's next victim.