Maestro
A stirring epic tracing the career of a man whose deceits, tragedies and betrayals mirror the greatest conflicts of our turbulent century…
America’s greatest living orchestra conductor, Louis Passau, is ninety.
Still sound in mind and body, he prepares to commemorate this milestone at a concert at New York’s Lincoln Center. But scandal threatens to spoil Passau’s celebration when he is accused of having spied for Hitler and of aiding clandestine KGB operations in the United States during the Cold War.
Western intelligence services have come to an arrangement with the Maestro: he may conduct the concert, but he is to be interrogated immediately afterward by SIS agent Herbie Kruger. When the concert ends, an attempt is made on Passau’s life and Herbie takes the Maestro into hiding.
There Kruger listens to the extraordinary confession of this fatally flawed man—brilliant on the podium, charming in public, foul-mouthed and streetwise in private—a man whose deceits, successes and often tragic loves are as improbable as they are enthralling. It becomes more and more difficult to separate truth from fiction, it also becomes nearly impossible to determine who the Maestro actually is—the musician, Passau, or his interrogator, Kruger.
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John Gardner
John Edmund Gardner was a British novelist. He was born in the village of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland as the son of a clergyman. He briefly attended Cottham’s Preparatory School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1931, and after the family had moved to Wantage in Berkshire in 1933, King Alfred’s School 1934–1943. He joined the Home Guard at the start of the Second World War and in 1943 the Royal Marines. He left the army four years later as his father wanted him to read theology. He earned his BA at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1950 and completed his degree at Oxford. Gardner was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1953.
Herbie Kruger
Herbie Kruger consists of five books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
