The Last Concerto - Helaine Mario A Review

The Lost Concerto

By

Helaine Mario

SYNOPSIS

A woman and her young son flee to a convent on a remote island off the Breton coast of France.  Generations of seafarers have named the place Ile de la Brume, or Fog Island. In a chapel high on a cliff, a tragic death occurs and a terrified child vanishes into the mist.

The child’s godmother, Maggie O’Shea, haunted by the violent deaths of her husband and best friend, has withdrawn from her life as a classical pianist. But then a recording of unforgettable music and a grainy photograph surface, connecting her missing godson to a long-lost first love. 

The photograph will draw Maggie inexorably into a collision course with criminal forces, decades-long secrets, stolen art and musical artifacts, and deadly terrorists. Her search will take her to the Festival de Musique, Aix-en-Provence, France, where she discovers answers to her husband’s death, an unexpected love―and a musical masterpiece lost for decades.

A compelling blend of suspense, mystery, political intrigue, and romance, The Lost Concerto explores universal themes of loss, vengeance, courage, and love.

REVIEW

As I sat down to review The Lost Concerto, I puzzled over which story to discuss, which tale to delve in to.  Most times when you are treated to a well written novel, you have a central theme (story) and one or two side stories that can be told to add breadth to the tale.  These could be stories that are running concurrently, back-stories that fills in the lives of the characters in the novel and adds depth and breadth to the central core and makes you love or hate the mainstay of the novel.  Sometimes, you might even get a side story that are small flash forwards of what is to come and whets your appetite for the coming pages and might give you a false sense of security or fright by leading you astray.

Helaine Mario swept this reader off her feet.  The mental score card came out as I began to track the numerous story paths through this complex and wondrous book that wrapped the reader in a web of intrigue.  There were several concurrent storylines that contained overlapping characters.  There were storylines with the same characters that flung the reader to the far and near past.  Each story, be it short or a longer one that continued to pop-up throughout the book, peeled back a little more of the total picture.  Each revelation changed the view of the panorama laid out before the reader, changing the viewpoint of what we thought and felt previously about a character or about where the story was headed. 

Who said, “nothing is as it seems, assume nothing”?  The only absolute to be assumed was that “all was not fair in love and war”.  Even as a reader, one felt ensnared in the tangled web of deceit that seemed to dominate both sides of this subtle war between the CIA and an ex-employee.  With a musician and a little boy caught in the web and at the center of the battle.  Who would win?  Would there be a winner?

Helaine did a great job of her character development.  Just like she did with her complex story lines, so she did with her characters.  Just as you thought you knew who someone was, you discovered that they were not the person you thought they were.  The friendships, the associations, the allies, the enemies; they seemed like fluid lines that moved and mixed.  You didn’t know who to trust, who to believe.  Much like the heroine, you had to stay focused on the reason – Max, the son of the heroine’s friend.  Nothing else could matter. 

This is one book that will go on the must be re-read shelf.  For with the coming of the last page, I knew I needed to read it again.  I wanted to gain all the nuances that I missed in the first read.  True, there were times I found myself rushing to turn the page, breathlessly waiting to see what the next page might reveal.  In my haste to absorb the incredulity and rush of the action of the story, what could I have missed?  Therefore, I find that I want to go back for a second read, knowing all, to wallow in the pure genius of the telling of the tale.

In my opinion, this is one book that should be up for multiple awards for fiction for 2015.  I cannot begin to enumerate the reasons for listing The Last Concerto a  FIVE STAR REVIEW!!!!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

New York City born and raised, Helaine is a Boston University graduate.  She married in 1969 and moved to CT to raise her two children, volunteer at Save the Children, and write for the local newspaper.

 In 1985, Helaine’s life took an unpredictable turn when her husband’s career brought her family to Potomac, MD.  For all eight years of the Clinton Presidency, she was a White House volunteer for Tipper and Al Gore, and continues to be a passionate advocate for public service and women & children’s issues.

 Because Helaine believes strongly in “giving back,” she has worked on several non-profit boards and, in 1998, founded The SunDial Foundation, Inc., which benefits our most vulnerable women, children and families.  She also created Project PJs, offering new books, bears and pajamas to under-served children in the community.

 Helaine and her husband, Ron Mario, now spend their time in Arlington, VA – where she continues her advocacy work – Longboat Key, Florida, and Cape May, NJ.   She is grateful to be a twelve year cancer survivor and is most proud of her two children and four beautiful grandchildren.  Her son, Sean, is the pianist who inspired the classical music background inThe Lost Concerto.

    

Buy it at AMAZON

The Martian - Andy Weir

SYNOPSIS

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

REVIEW

Space, the final frontier.  I have been a die-hard fan of flying to the stars for as long as I can remember.  My dad took me down to the Capital in Santa Fe, when I was five, so I could see the space capsule and shake the hand of the astronaut who flew into space (around the world a couple of times).  He gave me a signed postcard and a little flag.  My dad still has them and I still have the vivid memories. 

I still have the vivid memories of my dad waking us up so we could witness Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and taking those first steps.  “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.  It was an old black and white TV and the reception wasn’t the best, but we were watching history for mankind, and I felt the import of the event.

Sending men to Mars is not too much farther in my mind for us to do.  Come on, how far have we gone with Star Trek? Star Wars?  But really, even now, we have managed to get a space vehicle to go to Pluto with only a four hour delay in transmission.  WOW!!!!  That is so far beyond my thinking of the speed of what I thought we were capable of.

And then we land a man on Mars and he gets taken out by a sandstorm, not a meteor shower, or a capsule blowing up, but a sandstorm… man, we had sandstorms in Texas that could take out houses…

Can you imagine?  Stuck on Mars?  And no ride home?  At least not for three or four years.  Boy, time for creative thinking.  I have a year’s worth of food and no water…hm.  Well, of all the guys to get stranded, the lucky dog would be the farmer.  And to make matters even better, he was also the tinker man. 

I grew up with the expression being bounced around “nothing that bailing wire and duct tape won’t fix.”  Between a botanical degree, and the ability to disregard box-style thinking, Mark managed to create a biosphere from Martian soil, his waste, and figuring out how to suck water out of some Hydrogen fuel tanks.  He also created enough food to survive utilizing a few fresh food items he discovered on-board and growing them in the created biosphere. 
What kept the book, Mark, and me rolling, was the rollicking, tongue in cheek journal entries that were a caustic slap schtick.  He had the ability to laugh at his perilous situation and mock his tenuous hold on life out in the wilds of Mars --- alone.

In its interesting way, the book truly gave us a look at the kind of personality and tenacity that it demanded of an person who commits to a long term program of isolation and stress.  The demands needed to think on his feet, to be flexible, to be creative, to work through, around, over, and rework problems and solutions till answers are found. 

The other storylines of how NASA back on earth, and the astronauts returning home in the spaceship were handing the incident were also quite interesting.  While Mark was focused on survival, survival, survival, back at NASA politics and petty hierarchies seemed to take preferences, at times to the actual goal of getting Mark back home. 

The book was written in a journal format and in the first person.  The sections where there were flash-overs to NASA and to the other space craft (rocketing back towards earth), was written in a third person voice, as you observed what was happening, much like a fly on the wall.

Back story and depth was skillfully played out through Mark’s reflections in his log.  At one point, once he realized that NASA knew he was alive, he made the sarcastic remark that he was going to have to go back and clean-up and delete some entries on the journal, now that he knew it would be read.  I cracked-up.  Ooops….

I have always been one who says give me the book, maybe I’ll watch the movie, but this time around, Andy did such a wonderful job of building the world that Mark had to survive in, that I am now dying to see how it is visualized on the big screen this fall when the movie comes out. 

I loved this book.  It was a wonderful lite read that left me laughing.  The technical jargon was part and parcel and made the book work.  I give this book a full FOUR STAR RATING.  A great weekend read.  And a must read before you see the movie!!!!!

Net Galley provided a copy for me to read and review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANDY WEIR was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. The Martianis his first novel.

The Psalter - A Book Review

SYNOPSIS

A medieval prayer book, an Irish saint's prophecy of the last pope, and a forgery that changed the church—forever. Father Romano has run afoul of the modern inquisitors before. This time, it leads to a medieval manuscript and murder. Was it an ordinary theft gone wrong or something more? The Carabinieri in Rome would like to know. Michael Romano is an American priest working in the Vatican's Secret Archives with a penchant for stepping over the line. Church Inquisitors have noticed -- and aren't happy. Nevertheless, Romano is also the Church's senior paleographer, an expert in ancient manuscripts, and his expertise is needed to examine a ninth-century codex known as a Psalter. Father Romano's examination leads him into the past as he uncovers a historical narrative of medieval forgeries, Saracen invasions and a legendary fight for the richest kingdom on earth. Yet he has unwittingly become a target for those who will stop at nothing to possess the secret of the Psalter.

REVIEW

Religious, historical, fast-paced, action thrillers are like a sugar rush for this reviewer.  No, make that a double espresso chocolate brownie sugar rush.  Galen Watson did not give his readers, this one included, an opportunity to breath from the time we opened to the first page till I finally saw “the end” printed at the back of the book.  As I was reading an e-book version, I didn’t even have the cheat of knowing how many pages were left to know how much time was left before we would come to the end of the wild hair-raising ride.

Galen Watson spent very little time dithering about the backstory of side stories as he rocketed through the mystery of the Psalter.  The reader was pulled back and forth between the current time and the great Vatican Library with Father Romano who was investigating the loss of a Psalter and its mysteries and the 840’s during the time when the Vatican was controlled by Popes, Caesars, and the political families of Rome. 

The great mystery centered about Father Johannes and his Psalters.  It was during this time that a great many Psalters were penned by Father Johannes.  There were thousands of Psalters penned by scribes during that times.  What made these so special?  So sought after, even in the twenty-first century? 

Those who read Dan Brown, David Morrell, and other religious thriller authors over the last twenty years will enjoy this novel.  In fact, after reading The Psalter, I was curious enough to go do some research and find out more information on the subject of the Psalters of the era and of the subject of the surprise topic the jumped up about half way through the book and slapped me in the face.  No, I’m not telling…it needs to shock you as much as it did me.  I had to back up and catch my breath and re-think things for a few minutes before continuing…and google a few things.

Yes, this one is going on the “reading it again” shelf.  I give it a good 4.5 STARS.  I look forward to finding more of Galen Watson’s novels to enjoy.  I want to see what new surprises he has in the Vatican closet to keep me awake all night trying to finish a real page turner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I read the 300 Spartans by John Burke when I was in grade school and decided that I loved historical fiction. When I was a teenager, I read The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, and was fascinated with how he adeptly wove historical events into a fiction, filled with mystery, adventure, political intrigue, and philosophical reflections.

History fascinates me, particularly historical events that shape who we are. It has a major impact on my blog posts and stories, and it's a fundamental theme in The Psalter. When I read a novel, I want to be entertained, of course, but I also want to learn something historically, philosophically, or be provoked. Umberto Eco's character opined in The Name of the Rose, "Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means..." That's what I ask when I read a book, and when I write, I want it to mean something.

In high school, I was an exchange student in the French countryside, and heard about a medieval religious forgery, likely created in a monastery north of Paris in Corbie, not far from Amiens. I read the research over the years, and realized how dramatically it shifted church supremacy, in a dramatic power play that changed the church forever. It was that religio-political fight I wanted to write about. After I sold a business, I took some time off. That hiatus gave me time to reflect, and it dawned on me that if I didn't try to write a novel, I would never know if I could.

I live in the Sierra Nevada's and spend a lot of time in Paris and Normandy. I have a degree in French literature and admit to being a closet banjo picker.