Staccato by Deborah J. Ledford - a review

When two young pianists live under the same roof, are carefully groomed for stardom by their ‘uncle’ and share a hard competitive edge jealousy is bound to rear its ugly head. When the more accomplished of the two, Nicholas, appears to have the winning hand then the other, Timothy, takes every pleasure in bring him down a notch.

When this comeuppance involves the death of Nicolas’ lover and his own near murder he has to fake memory loss to get enough time to gather the information he needs to get even with his rival. With the discovery of his father’s secret diary he is able to put together the missing pieces he needs to bring the whole ‘family’ to their knees. With the help of a new found love he forges a bond to get back to a real life again.

If I had not read Ledford’s second novel, Snare, out of sequence and known that the protagonist was to be detective Steven Hawk I would have thought that Nicholas was the hero of the novel and Hawk takes too long of a time before making his appearance in Staccato. Both books can be read as stand-alone novels and the second is much more satisfactory than the first showing the growth that this writer has made in her style between books. I know there is a third in the series due out and I am chomping at the bit to read it too.

Staccato is a fine novel, a thriller that is poignant, suspenseful and written to a broken beat that sets the stage for each successive story line to advance with allegro.