Playing With Fire, by Tess Gerritsen

TITLE: Playing With Fire
AUTHOR: Tess Gerritsen

COPYRIGHT: 2015
PAGES: 250
PUBLISHER: Ballantine

SETTING: Contemporary US and Italy, and 1940s Italy
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: None

In a shadowy antiques shop in Rome, violinist Julia Ansdell happens upon a curious piece of music—the Incendio waltz—and is immediately entranced by its unusual composition. Full of passion, torment, and chilling beauty, and seemingly unknown to the world, the waltz, its mournful minor key, its feverish arpeggios, appear to dance with a strange life of their own. Julia is determined to master the complex work and make its melody heard.

Back home in Boston, from the moment Julia’s bow moves across the strings, drawing the waltz’s fiery notes into the air, something strange is stirred—and Julia’s world comes under threat. The music has a terrifying and inexplicable effect on her young daughter, who seems violently transformed. Convinced that the hypnotic strains of Incendio are weaving a malevolent spell, Julia sets out to discover the man and the meaning behind the score.

Her quest beckons Julia to the ancient city of Venice, where she uncovers a dark, decades-old secret involving a dangerously powerful family that will stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light.

I'm addicted to Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles series. I haven't read her earlier single titles yet (I'm saving them for a rainy day, and yes, I know that doesn't make sense), but if they're as good as this one, I'm in for a treat.

Violinist Julia Ansell has just finished a tour in Italy and is happily puttering around antique shops in Rome when she happens upon a piece of music she has never come across. It's a hand-written score, a waltz called the Incendio, and it sounds complex and wonderful when she reads it. It's expensive, since it's, the shop-owner tells her, one of a kind, but she knows she has to have it.

Once back home, Julia sets out to play her new piece of music and is shocked by the results. Not only does the piece consume her and set her into a sort of hypnotic state, it seems to possess her young daughter, as well. Faced with a daughter who seems to become a violent killer when she hears those particular notes, Julia is determined to find out what's wrong. But when her initial approaches to neurologists and psychologists result in disbelief and questioning of her own sanity, Julia realises she must find out more about the piece of music and its creator.

Interspersed with the modern-day story of Julia and her daughter, we get the story of the musician who created the piece. It's the early 40s and Lorenzo lives in Venice, part of a Jewish community where most people consider themselves to be fully integrated and Italian, so surely they have nothing to fear?

This was just great. It's creepy and mysterious and the thriller element really worked. I did have a few issues at the start of the book, where I had some doubts about whether the use of the Holocaust storyline felt appropriate, but this was a book that really won me over. The 1940s thread ended up being extremely moving. The depiction of the situation, where Italian Jews felt so well-integrated that they refused to believe that all those things that were rumoured could possibly be true, felt real. Surely it couldn't happen here, surely not these days? I kept wanting to shout at them to "Go, go! Leave!", while understanding completely why they wouldn't.

And the present-day storyline was really well-done as well. I don't want to say a lot, as not knowing quite what to expect is one of the best aspects of it, but I will say that the resolution was what really made it. It's a resolution that could conceivably feel like a cop-out, like the author had painted herself into a corner and was taking the easy way out, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels right. And by being what it is, not what we might have thought it would be (sorry to be so cryptic!) it feels somehow more respectful of the WWII sections.

MY GRADE: A strong B+.