"The Mozart Conspiracy"

Scott Mariani grew up in St. Andrews, Scotland. He studied Modern Languages at Oxford and went on to work as a translator, a professional musician, a pistol shooting instructor and a freelance journalist before becoming a full-time writer. After spending several years in Italy and France, Mariani discovered his secluded writer's haven in the wilds of west Wales, an 1830s country house complete with rambling woodland and a secret passage. When he isn't writing, Mariani enjoys jazz, movies, classic motorcycles and astronomy.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Mozart Conspiracy, and reported the following:

As it happens, page 69 of the US edition of The Mozart Conspiracy finds us reaching an extremely important moment in the story, deepening the reader’s insights into the background and psychology of the main character, Ben Hope.

At this point in the plot, Ben has just found out the shocking truth of what his old friend and former army comrade, Oliver Llewellyn, witnessed shortly before his death – making Ben certain that Oliver’s untimely drowning in a frozen lake in Austria was no accident. It’s on page 69, during a brief lull in the action, that Ben is able to sit for a moment and reflect on a key incident in his past that makes him all the more determined to hunt down his friend’s killers.

...And he remembered the day, all those years ago, when Oliver had saved his life.

It had been the coldest winter he could remember. After three years of army service, Lance Corporal Benedict Hope had travelled to Hereford in the Welsh borders, along with 138 other hopefuls from other regiments for what he knew was going to be the toughest endurance test of his life: selection for 22 Special Air Service, the most elite fighting force in the British Army...

Would the reader want to read on to page 70? I hope so! If I’ve done my job well, the reader’s mind should be bursting with questions as the intrigue is now deepened: how did Oliver save Ben’s life? Is there a connection between the incident during SAS selection and what later happened to Oliver? How did Oliver come to make the jump from British army soldier to music scholar, and become caught up in a historical mystery involving the death of the composer Mozart? Will Ben be able to solve the mystery and track his friend’s killers; and exactly how will his military expertise, already seen at the start of the book when he rescues two kidnapped children from a paedophile ring, come into play to enable him to avenge Oliver?

Learn more about the book and author at the official The Mozart Conspiracy website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue