The Devil’s Harmony

At the start of Rayne’s haunting fifth Phineas Fox mystery (after 2019’s Music Macabre), two scholars ask London musicologist Phineas Fox and his lover, Arabella Tallis, to authenticate a scrapbook recovered from a building site in Warsaw, Poland, where the Chopin Library once stood decades ago before the Germans destroyed it during WWII. The scrapbook contains a draft of what looks like a concert program cover with the name of a quartet, a date, and a piece of music the scholars agree would never have been performed at a concert, let alone written down. Phineas and Arabella set out to identify the mysterious and ominous piece of music, which is only performed at a traitor’s execution and has a connection to what happened in 1944 Poland, as well as events in 1918 Russia. Rayne smoothly intertwines the present-day action with flashbacks as this intricate tale of music, love, betrayal, and self-sacrifice builds to a satisfactory if somewhat unsurprising conclusion. The snarky banter of the academics provides a nice comic touch. Fans of intelligent historical mysteries will be rewarded. Agent: Jane Conway-Gordon, Jane Conway-Gordon Ltd. (U.K.). (Feb.)