Dark Rhapsody: A Maggie O’Shea Mystery

Mario’s enjoyable if melodramatic sequel to 2015’s The Lost Concerto finds classical pianist Maggie O’Shea at the cabin of her lover, Col. Michael Beckett, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. When she tells Michael she feels as if she’s losing control of her life, he reassures her that she’s taking it back “one note at a time.” She hopes that she’s seen the last of the evil man known as Dane, with whom she has tangled in the past, but Michael knows that Dane isn’t finished with Maggie. Meanwhile, Maggie is haunted by fragmented childhood memories of her pianist mother’s drowning and by the disappearance of her father, a famous conductor who walked out of Carnegie Hall in the middle of a performance just weeks after her mother’s death. Maggie’s story links up with the Nazi theft of art during WWII and the hunt for it in the present day. Michael and Maggie contend with various bad guys, including some who belong to Yale’s Skull and Bones society, en route to the inevitable clash with Dane. Mario manages to hold all the plot pieces together surprisingly well. Romantic suspense fans will find much to like. (July)