Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb

A gripping page-turner from the celebrated author of book club favorite The Violin Conspiracy: Music professor Bern Hendricks discovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time—his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed.

Determined to uncover the truth that a powerful organization wants to keep hidden, Bern will stop at nothing to right history's wrongs and give Josephine the recognition she deserves.

“A maestro of musical mystery...Slocumb’s writing is invigorating, and the detail in his character work makes the main characters in both time periods easy to root for.... Thrilling.” —The New York Times

Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world’s preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, Bern knows everything there is to know about the man behind the music. When Mallory Roberts, a board member of the distinguished Delaney Foundation and direct descendant of the man himself, asks for Bern’s help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, RED, he jumps at the chance. With the help of his tech-savvy acquaintance Eboni, Bern soon discovers that the truth is far more complicated than history would have them believe.

In 1920s Manhattan, Josephine Reed is living on the streets and frequenting jazz clubs when she meets the struggling musician Fred Delaney. But where young Delaney struggles, Josephine soars. She’s a natural prodigy who hears beautiful music in the sounds of the world around her. With Josephine as his silent partner, Delaney’s career takes off—but who is the real genius here?

In the present day, Bern and Eboni begin to uncover more clues that indicate Delaney may have had help in composing his most successful work. Armed with more questions than answers and caught in the crosshairs of a powerful organization who will stop at nothing to keep their secret hidden, Bern and Eboni will move heaven and earth in their dogged quest to right history’s wrongs.

My Verdict

Delaney, Bern and Eboni are all entertaining, but Josephine emerges as singularly intriguing. Her debilitating mental struggle is the source that fuels an inexhaustible creativity. Slocumb names autism in his introductory note. She is indeed characteristically withdrawn socially (avoiding eye contact and touch), but Josephine also exhibits mind states associated with schizophrenia. She is synesthetic and hypersensitive to sound, hearing notes and noises in colors. This condition makes a fantasia of merely walking down Broadway. But she can capture her musical vision through her idiosyncratic notation system. When Delaney first asks how she patterns a particularly complex chordal progression, she responds simply: “It was easy. Orange and teal go together.”

As Slocumb alternates artfully between the 1920s historical narrative and the present-day quest to unravel its mystery, he also parallels the two, which symbolically serves to repair the past.

Bern and Eboni are the true equal partners, and as Black standout professionals, their work restores Josephine’s racial dignity. Still, racism persists a century later. Bern and Eboni fend off ongoing racial slights working for the Delaney Foundation, and, in one dramatic chapter, Bern suffers stark police abuse.

Symphony of Secrets is ultimately an affirmation. Music has historically been the country’s ethnically richest art form, particularly embodied in the multicultural story of jazz and in today’s cross-fertilization between popular genres. I thoroughly enjoyed Slocumb's first book The Violin Conspiracy, but this one was so much better. I give this one 4.5 stars.