The Man of Twists and Turns

Two terrific reviews for my new novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA on UK fiction blogs. First, here’s something from the review on Novel Suggestions: The language, and political and religious backdrops that underpin the story work well to draw you in to the period setting of the late eighteenth century, and I also found the author’s [...]

The Christian Science Monitor names my Omar Yussef novels among its Top 7 Detective Series Set in Foreign Locales. My Palestinian sleuth takes his place alongside detectives by Alexander McCall Smith, Andrea Camilleri, Jason Goodwin, and Zoe Ferraris among others. I also have a terrific review from The Fringe Magazine for my new novel MOZART’S [...]

London classical music guru Mark Berry has a guest post from me on his excellent Boulezian blog. I write about how my task as a historical novelist was aided by the period locations still surviving in Vienna, when I wrote my new book MOZART’S LAST ARIA. I also write more about some of those places [...]

British composer and top classical music blogger Robert Hugill reviews my historical crime novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA. He describes it as “absorbing,” unpredictable and “a real page turner.” It’s very gratifying to me that this terrific classical musician should appreciate the way I write about the performance of Wolfgang’s music in the novel. I worked [...]

The excellent UK fiction blog Floor to Ceiling Books (you can find film and television reviews there too) has a guest post from me about how my portrayal of Mozart stacks up against the popular image of him as a buffoon who happened to be able to write sublime music. I’m delighted blogger “Magemanda” posed [...]

Novelist, journalist and classical music blogger Jessica Duchen has an interview with me about my new novel Mozart’s Last Aria on her excellent blog today, which she titles “Roll Over Amadeus.” Wish I’d thought of the headline. (Well, now it’s on my blog anyhow!) Here’s how she introduces her interview: “A musical thriller landed on [...]

I’ve a guest post on the UK book blog Bookgeeks today, about how I “wrote the music” for my new Mozart novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA. Here’s how the post starts: I’ve played music all my life, but I’m no musician. After my initial childhood music lessons I parted ways with the playing of classical music. [...]

I wrote guest posts for two top UK classical music blogs this week. In different ways they both examine how I went about writing…about music. Though it mightn’t be obvious, one of the most challenging aspects of writing MOZART’S LAST ARIA, my new historical thriller about the great composer’s death, was to give an account [...]

The excellent UK crime fiction blog Crime Time features a guest post from me today. I write about how my initial ideas and research for my historical thriller MOZART’S LAST ARIA grew out of my attempts to soothe the trauma of covering the Palestinian intifada as a foreign correspondent.

Here’s a talk I gave to a group of journalists in Jerusalem last week about my new ‘Arab Spring’ short story. In DAMASCUS TRANCE, I decided to make an immediate response to the bloody crackdown on freedom demonstrators by the Syrian government. The story involves my Palestinian detective character Omar Yussef, the politics of the [...]