The Mysterious Bookshop
Gerald Elias - The Beethoven Sequence
Join us for a virtual launch event Tuesday, 9/8 at 6:30 EST on Facebook Live
From the pen of Salt Lake City novelist Gerald Elias, author of the critically acclaimed Daniel Jacobus mystery series, comes his first thriller. The Beethoven Sequence, the story of a mentally imbalanced political outsider who makes an improbable ascent to the presidency of the United States, is scheduled for a September 8 release by Level Best Books.
A rural Colorado machine shop mechanic, Layton Stolz is obsessed with the music of Beethoven and its message of freedom for mankind. Building a cult-like empire of acolytes, by the time he is elected president his message has metastasized into a cancerous ideology, and his political machine is bent upon eliminating his opponents. One of them is Ballard Whitmore, a graduate of Brigham Young University who was imprisoned on trumped-up sexual misconduct charges. Whitmore and female reporter Sandy Duckworthy, the only person who believes his story, risk their lives in their quest for his exoneration and the downfall of President Layton Stolz.
The Beethoven Sequence is truly a novel suited to our turbulent times. Conceived well before the current White House administration, it contains prescient parallels of what could happen when political power, supported by a critical mass of indoctrinated acolytes, goes unchecked. In its starred review of Elias’s mystery, Death and Transfiguration, Booklist wrote, “Brilliant and captivating on every level.” Level Best executive editor, Shawn Simmons, added, “I’m confident the same will be said about The Beethoven Sequence. Working on this book with Jerry has been very exciting!”
