Sleeper by Paul Adam

Musical mystery set in a quiet city in Lombardy

Sleeper has also been published
as The Rainaldi Quartet

As a lover of crime fiction, I enjoy a well plotted mystery, and it is even better if the novel also has an evocatively described Italian setting. In Sleeper, Paul Adam brings Cremona to life for the reader. It is a city that is perhaps not as well known as Milan, Bergamo, or Mantua, but like those other famous cities in Lombardy, Cremona has a long and fascinating history.

Cremona has also become synonymous in people’s minds with violin making and, without forcing too much knowledge on the reader, Adam imparts a lot of the history and tradition of this craft during the novel.

The story begins in the countryside outside Cremona when four men meet at a house for their monthly chance to play music together as a string quartet. One of them is a priest, another a policeman, and the other two are expert luthiers, the craftsmen who make stringed instruments.

After enjoying music, wine, and laughter together, they disperse one after the other. But when one of the luthiers does not arrive back at his home as expected, the other luthier, Gianni Castiglione, and the policeman, Antonio Guastafeste, go to look for him at his workshop in Cremona, where they find him dead, having been stabbed with one of his own chisels.

It is a mystery to them why anyone would want to kill the elderly luthier, Tomaso Rainaldi, who was not particularly well off and was liked by everyone who knew him, The only clue that Castiglione and Guastafeste can go on is that Rainaldi seems to have become involved in a quest to track down a rare and fabled violin made by one of the famous Cremonese master luthiers. An instrument, if it exists, that could potentially be worth millions.

The book was so well written it was a delight to read. In Castiglione, the novel has an unusual protagonist and amateur sleuth because the luthier is no longer young. Although he is semi-retired, he still practises the art of violin making, and mending, at his home and he has an expert knowledge of the instrument. Therefore, Guastafeste persuades his superiors to allow his friend to join the official police investigation.

The action in Sleeper takes place against the 
backcloth of the mediaeval city of Cremona

Castiglione has some long shadows from his past and reveals his flaws to the reader as the novel progresses. The story is told in the first person and the reader can get inside his head and know what Castiglione is thinking at times. Yet Adam succeeds in making the reader get behind Castiglione and to want to urge him on in his quest to find out who murdered his friend.

Castiglione and Guastafeste hope that following the trail leading to the famous violin will help them  unmask the murderer and so they take up Rainaldi’s mission themselves, retracing his recent travels to Milan, Venice, and other interesting places in northern Italy, as well as visiting England briefly.

Paul Adam has written 13 novels for adults and a trilogy of thrillers for children. A former journalist, he now lives in Sheffield, but he has worked in Rome and travelled widely in Italy. He plays the violin himself and as a result became interested in how violins are made.

He chose Cremona as his setting because it was home to the masters of violin making, Stradivari, Guarneri, and Amati. It has been the centre of violin making for centuries and is still a city of luthiers. He said in an interview that he did his research in Cremona in person to make sure he described his locations and the atmosphere of the city accurately.

Sleeper was first published in 2004 by Endeavour Publishing, but was republished under the title of The Rainaldi Quartet by Macmillan in 2007.  There are another two books by Adam making up a Cremona trilogy, Paganini’s Ghost and The Hardanger Riddle.

I am packing a copy of Paganini’s Ghost to take on holiday with me in a few days, when I will be visiting, guess where, Cremona! Can’t wait to read it.

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