Mishka may be the musician, but it's his lover, Leela, who descends into an underground of torture and kidnapping when it appears that he may have terrorist connections. Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

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A graduate student in mathematics particularly interested in her subject's application to music, Leela Moore is mesmerized by the sound of a violin pouring forth from the subway stop at Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA. She and violinist Mishka Bartok immediately enter into a fervent relationship, but there's a catch: Mishka, raised in Australia by his odd little family of Holocaust survivors, keeps disappearing. It turns out that he is visiting a local mosque, though not to consort with terrorists, as Leela's old friend Cobb believes. Cobb's father is a pugnacious outcast in their little town of Promised Land, SC, and Leela's father a religious obsessive; as children they formed a bond, though Cobb's obsession for Leela long ago turned to anger. An ex-military man now working under contract in security, he's out to get her�after all, she's sleeping with the enemy. Meanwhile, Mishka, as adept at the oud as he is at the violin, is really only after the truth about the father he never knew�which leads him to torture in the Middle East. With a politically charged narrative intent on sorting out issues of identity and the clash between appearance and truth, this astonishingly rich novel by the author of Oyster will entrance readers the way Mishka's music entranced Leela. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/07.]�Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

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Bewitched by the haunting violin she hears in the subway under Harvard Square, MIT mathematician Leela-May Magnolia Moore falls in love at first listen with mysterious musician Mishka Bartok. This ambitious but flawed romantic thriller is a post-9/11 reworking of the Orpheus myth by one of Australia's most acclaimed novelists. The nightmare begins with a series of terrorist bombings, overlapping with disappearances by Mishka. Leela starts tailing her lover, only to be snatched off the street and interrogated by members of a shadowy private security force. Their leader: none other than Cobb Slaughter, the former Special Forces op who has loved/loathed her since their blighted childhoods in the South Carolina hamlet of Promised Land. Is Cobb simply tormenting Leela for his own sadistic pleasure, or could the Australian-born Mishka really be a terrorist? Hospital (Due Preparations for the Plague ) sends the anguished Leela across three continents searching for answers, but extended flashbacks and florid prose slow the pace. Despite the novel's timely, provocative premise, it unfortunately isn't only Orpheus who goes astray. (Oct.)

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