Book review - "The Mozart Score" by Edwin Leather

I remember reading The Mozart Score by Edwin Leather years ago so when I saw it in a used book store, I picked it up to re-read it but I didn’t recall any of the story.

First, I’ll say that I did enjoy reading it again.  It’s a sort of a spy novel but without the undercover antics and intelligence as in Daniel Silva or Brad Thor.  The story centers on the kidnapping of an Israeli scientist Karl Reuben by Arab terrorists.  Did I mention this was published in 1977?  This takes place before the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union.  Soviet bloc countries are still shrouded in secrecy and distrust of everyone.  Rupert Conway is an art dealer in Vienna and gets involved in the search for the scientist, since Conway is a friend of Rueben’s father.  The search takes them across Austria, Yugoslavia and Albania.

Second, the story was exciting for most of it, but the ultimate climax was rather disappointing.

Third, his writing, although full of rich details of the country and cities in southeast Europe, breaks the cardinal rule of showing rather than telling.  The omniscient narrator is pervasive throughout the story.  It made the head hops not nearly as distracting as in previous novels. 

Fourth, the opening scene in which a man is murdered during a Mozart performance in Vienna is not resolved until the last page, literally, and it seems almost an afterthought, as if Leather realized he hadn’t addressed it since the second chapter. 

Lastly, the Mozart score in the novel has nothing to do with the novel.

Leather also wrote a book The Vienna Elephant but I don’t think I’ll read it.

Two 𝅘𝅥𝅮 out of five.