000 01829nam a22001577a 4500
999 _c22580
_d22580
020 _a9780316724333
082 _a823.914
_bADA
100 _aAdam, Paul
245 _aSleeper /
_cPaul Adam
260 _aLondon :
_bTime Warner,
_c2004
300 _a377 pages ;
_c18 cm
520 _aWho would want to kill Tomaso Rainaldi, an elderly, unassuming violin-maker in the quiet Italian city of Cremona? For his friend and fellow violin-maker Gianni Castiglione, the murder is as mysterious as it is shocking. Rainaldi had few possessions, no enemies and little money. No one - least of all the police - can fathom a motive for murdering him. All he really had was an obsessive love of violins." "And an encyclopaedic knowledge of them. Supposing he knew more than anyone else - not just about famous violins, but about missing violin? Ones of the caliber of the fabled Messiah, Stradivari's most sublime creation, the Mona Lisa of the music world. A violin now in the Ashmolean in Oxford - and worth [pound]10 million." "Aided by his friend, policeman Antonio Guastafeste, Gianni starts to investigate the dead man's affairs. Affairs that reveal an appointment in Venice with the eccentric and exceedingly rich violin-collector Enrico Forlani, and a trail that winds back to a mysterious musical past - and a far from harmonious future." "Retracing Rainaldi's steps, the two men find themselves involved in a sequence of startling events that lead to another murder, a mysterious Englishman and an unscrupulous violin-dealer. A train of events that careers across Italy and England as they become players in a game where musical instruments change hands for millions, where forgery is an art form and the preferred method of negotiation is murder
650 _aDetective and mystery fiction
650 _aFiction
942 _2ddc
_cBK