Nocturne for a Dangerous Man is Marc Matz’s first novel, and it is an absolute smash home run. Wow.
It’s not quite science fiction, not quite murder mystery, not quite spy adventure, but some mixture of them all, with a healthy dose of philosophy, culture, and music thrown in.
(Anti)hero Gavilan Robie is dashing and performs requisite derring-do, but he’s also an accomplished musician, art theft investigator, and not-so-homespun Deep Thinkerâ„¢ … it’s obvious that author Matz has a very wide – and deep – background in a variety of disciplines, and he brings all that knowledge to bear in this novel. It’s the wealth of setting and situation that takes this novel from an excellent thriller to a persuasively real virtual world.
Worth triple the price of admission – especially but not only when you pick it up from the library – and a worthy addition to your shelf.
A nocturne, by the way, is a slow, comtemplative piece of piano music, usually played at night, and often having a dreamlike character. (I had to look it up too – I knew it was music-related, but couldn’t place the exact meaning …)
It’s hard to believe that this book is Matz’s first … but there’s obviously something to be said about starting to write when you’re older. Matz is somewhere in his 50’s, and his writing betrays a broad range of knowledge and experience that is very welcome, and somewhat unusual, in this genre.