Wesley Stace

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Misfortune

By George

Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

Wesley Stace is a brilliant and intensely original writer and this is his most unusual book yet

We might have predicted that Wesley Stace - a fine novelist and a fine musician - would one day write a novel about music, but could we have predicted that it would be so brilliant? The dialogue sparkles, the prose glimmers, and for once you leave a novel not just haunted by the characters and the story, but humming the tunes. A delightful Opus 3

A tremendously imaginative novel... beneath its sparkling surface there are some very murky depths. A wonderfully disquieting read

Nothing in recent fiction prepared me for the power and the polish of this subtle tale of English music in the making, a chiller wrapped in an enigma

His handling of dry comic dialogue and cynical affectation is reminiscent of P. G. Wodehouse... an intelligent, fun and thoughful piece of fiction

As quick-witted and clever as its predecessors... An entertainment of unusual class and penetration. And the tunes are great

The whodunit is a mere pretext for witty debate

Subtle, funny and chilling, this delicious novel of music and murder unfolds among composers and critics of the 1910s and 1920s. Stace plays his deadly variations with real brio in a richly entertaining performance

A baroque intellectual thriller, wittily erudite and psychologically acute. Jessold joins Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkühn and Randall Jarrell's Gottfried Rosenbaum in the gallery of memorable composers in fiction

A superbly entertaining insight into the darker side of early 20th-century English music… Utterly quirky, informative fun

The night before brilliant but erratic composer Charles Jessold's opera - about a betrayed husband who murders his wife and her lover - is due to open, Jessold is found dead, having apparently murdered his wife and her lover. 
 
Leslie Shepherd, music critic and Jessold's collaborator on the opera, reflects on the scandalous affair in a dazzling, passionate and witty novel about the dangerous relationship between artist and critic.

A brilliant, witty thriller set in the world of English classical music in the early years of the twentieth century.

Wesley Stace is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, the international bestseller Misfortune (2005) and By George (2007). Stace is also a musician who, under the name John Wesley Harding, has released 15 albums ranging from traditional folk to pop music. The Los Angeles Times hailed his most recent pop release, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, as "Bookshop Rock like no other... expertly tweaking the lyricist's game at every turn" while the Wall Street Journal praised the album's "lyrics that dazzle without condescending."

Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

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