Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

Leslie Shepherd, a music critic nearing the end of his life, reflects on the shocking murder-suicide that rocked London society years before. The unlikely killer- Charles Jessold, composer, prodigy, and Shepherd s collaborator on the opera that was set to open the following night. The victims- Jessold s wife and her vocal coach, found poisoned in her marriage-bed. At the centre of the scandal is the opera itself, now postponed indefinitely the tale of a betrayed husband who murders his wife and her lover, before taking his own life. Shepherd s own involvement stretches back to his first encounter with Jessold decades earlier, when he captivated the young musician with a sordid true-crime story of a cuckolded composer whose murderous revenge prefigured Jessold s crime. Throughout the book this marital theme a husband, a wife and her lover replays itself in endless variations as Shepherd wrestles with questions of guilt, justice and the responsibility of a muse to those she inspires. CHARLES JESSOLD, CONSIDERED AS A MURDERER brings centre stage ideas of fidelity and the complexities of love in all of its forms. Set amid growing anti-German sentiment, as English composers

About the Author :
Wesley Stace is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, the international bestseller Misfortune (2005) and By George (2007). Stace is also a musician who, under the name John Wesley Harding, has released 15 albums ranging from traditional folk to pop music. The Los Angeles Times hailed his most recent pop release, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, as "Bookshop Rock like no other... expertly tweaking the lyricist's game at every turn" while the Wall Street Journal praised the album's "lyrics that dazzle without condescending.

Review :
A baroque intellectual thriller, wittily erudite and psychologically acute. Jessold joins Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkühn and Randall Jarrell's Gottfried Rosenbaum in the gallery of memorable composers in fiction I read Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer in the white noise of a long plane ride; afterward I felt as though I had spent hours listening to symphonies, snatches of music in the midst of being composed, and a low persuasive voice telling me about bad behaviour and surprising sins. This is one of the few novels I have read that is truly musical. Wesley Stace is a brilliant and intensely original writer and this is his most unusual book yet. We might have predicted that Wesley Stace - a fine novelist and a fine musician - would one day write a novel about music, but could we have predicted that it would be so brilliant? The dialogue sparkles, the prose glimmers, and for once you leave a novel not just haunted by the characters and the story, but humming the tunes. A delightful Opus 3.