Sensitive look into painful part of history and a tribute to love that cannot be

There are powerful forces both external and internal working against her

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Tess Gerritsen Loot.co.za (R668) Transworld Books TESS GERRITSEN is one of my favourite thriller writers – if she wasn’t her other accomplishments would be enough to make me dislike her. The woman is a physician, studied anthropology at Stanford and has an ability to compose music.

However, I will forgive her all of this for her new book, sold as a thriller, but which is so much more.

Julia, the mother of a two-yearold goes to Italy to play her violin – it’s a very precious violin to her, and while she is in Venice she stops off at a strange music shop and finds an old book of Gypsy tunes.

In the book she finds an added bonus; a music score for a violin and a cello waltz named Incendio.

The composer’s name is L Todesco, but when she returns to her peaceful home and happy marriage, she finds that it appears to hold some kind of strange power.

Whenever she plays it, her little girl Lily responds violently to her mother.

Julia, who adores her daughter and her husband Rob, is horrified by the child’s behaviour and it is pretty gruesome.

The music has what are known as “devil’s chords” in it, and Julia becomes obsessed with finding out more about the music.

She is also drawn into a psychological waltz of her own where she has to face the fact that what she believed to have been true about her mentally unstable mother’s death is not the truth.

As Julia’s search for the composer leads her to fire off letters to Italy, she becomes more and more fearful for her daughter. Her poor husband on the other hand is at the end of his tether, watching his wife turn into a nervous wreck.

The story is interspersed with the story of Lorenzo, a young man living in Venice and in love with Laura. The problem is that Lorenzo is Jewish and Laura is not.

Through telling each character’s stories chapter by chapter, Gerritsen tells the story of what happened to the Jews in Italy. It’s a desperate story about cultured people who do not believe that the evil that is Nazism will ever reach their cultivated city. But, of course it does and Lorenzo, whose family has already been marginalised, must make a choice – flee to safety or stay with his beloved family.

The choice that he makes sets up the story for Playing with Fire.

The choices that Julia makes set up the thriller note for the story – her letters wake up an old secret that could harm powerful people and place her in danger.

What Julia fears is that her husband thinks she has gone mad. What she doesn’t realise is that there are powerful forces both external and internal working against her, and that time is not on her side.

Gerritsen has reached deep inside herself to provide a book that is very different to her usual fare. This is a sensitive look into a very painful part of history, and the way that it reaches out to us to this day and interweaves itself in our lives.

The descriptions are beautiful and the plot is clever. But, mostly it is a story that is a tribute to love that cannot be, and love that can be rekindled.

Just to make things even more interesting, Gerritsen has written the score for Incendio and it has been recorded by Yi-Jian Susanne Hou and is available on iTunes.

You can also hear a snatch of it at www.susannehou.com. A lovely novel that made me cry instead of sitting up in thriller fight all night.