There’s something satisfying watching his confidence build alongside his musical skill-and yet he never grows cocky or condescending. Through the whole story, we are not only pulled along by the mystery of the theft but by the trajectory of Ray’s career. This one is a page-turner very much in the spirit of Ned Bauman’s The Teleportation Accident. Even if it’s cracked and worn and needing repair, it launches Ray to stardom. Without his violin, though, Ray feels, “incompetent,” like he’s back playing at weddings, not Carnegie Hall. Who did it? The Marks? Ray’s own family? And with only months to go before the international Tchaikovsky Competition-which for classical musicians is like “The Voice” meets Wimbledon-will Ray and the police be able to find it in time? The power of the violin itself is amazing. Of course, the question of whom the violin belongs to quickly becomes purely academic as the violin is stolen from Ray’s hotel room in New York, right out of its case. The wealthy Marks family claims that the violin was stolen from them after the end of the Civil War by Ray’s great-great-grandfather (known as “PopPop”) who played the fiddle and is thus the rightful inheritance of their young daughter, herself an aspiring musician. Ray knows it was meant for him, but his money-obsessed family has other plans.

$28īrendan Slocumb’s debut novel, The Violin Conspiracy, tells the story of Ray McMillian, a young black violinist who discovers a lost family secret that beggars belief-a genuine Stradivarius violin in his grandmother’s attic, worth more than ten million dollars.

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb.

The violin conspiracy