What's in this book
- Paul Adam's 2004 literary mystery - a Cremona violin-restorer investigates the murder of a fellow craftsman
- Canonical contemporary European literary mystery; first of the Gianni Castiglione series
- 320 pages of patient procedural texture about the operational realities of Italian violin-making and dealing
- Author also wrote Paganini's Ghost (2009), the structural follow-up
- For readers of Donna Leon, Andrea Camilleri, and contemporary Italian literary mystery fiction
- A canonical entry in the European literary-craft mystery tradition
Buy this book
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The Rainaldi Quartet is the Paul Adam novel that should be on the shelf of every reader who has ever wondered if music-world mysteries can carry serious weight. The quartet of the title are four aging amateur Italian musicians who meet weekly to play chamber music together, and one of them, a luthier, has been quietly investigating a suspicious Stradivarius authentication that turned out to involve a death.
Adam's knowledge of the Italian luthiery world is the engine. The Cremona scenes are technically precise without being showy. The chamber-music sequences are some of the most affectionate musical writing in any genre. The investigation itself is the chassis. The friendship between the four men is the heart.
The closing chapters earn their elegiac weight. Five stars. Recommended even to readers who do not normally seek out classical-music settings.
Related reads
If you liked The Rainaldi Quartet
Flash Point
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Flash Point by Paul Adam 2006 review. A Glasgow journalist investigates the death of a young African violinist competing in the Tchaikovsky Competition and stumbles into a missing-instrument scandal.
Killing of the Saints
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Enemy Within
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Sleeper
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The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
Big Little Lies
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Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
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