The stakes are high indeed as in high mountains, high pitched music and personal cost. In a thriller involving a Stradivarius violin we don’t get to follow an orchestra, as one might expect. We follow a Boston Irish lawyer who helps out the Chinese community and gets encouraged to do a good deed for them. HIGH STAKES develop when the Russian mafia and the Romanian gangster who thinks he should own the historic instrument, all want to get their hands on it too. John F. Dobbyn has written five previous books in the Knight and Devlin series; this was my first.

Collect a Stradivarius violin from a shop in the Carpathian Mountains, while holidaying in the beautiful East European country of Romania. How hard could that be? Michael Knight agrees, and suddenly his life and that of his wife are endangered. Back in Boston, he’s followed, threatened and surrounded. As a working lawyer he is used to thinking and talking his way out of trouble. But first he needs to understand the background, and everyone has been lying. Count Vlad Dracula turns out to be at the root of the matter, the much later violin a key to a location. With Russian, Chinese, and Romanian gangs trying to get their hands on it, Michael can’t please everyone.

I enjoyed the changes of setting and the portions of history told to Michael; the centuries old legend of Vlad the Impaler, the reason for the beautiful tones on the violin, the arrival of ‘paper sons’ of Chinese men in America. What surprised me most in the unlikely thriller is that Michael never once decides to go to the police. Okay, in East Europe he might not want to be implicated in crimes. But in Boston where his legal firm works? This says a lot about his attitude to the police. He phones them once to provide information and ask for information. Otherwise, despite shootings, stabbings, beatings and explosions, he calls a pal or a PI.

Almost all the characters are male, and those females we meet are learned and helpful, but don’t take active parts in the chases and bamboozling. While classical music fans will enjoy the ride, knowledge of this music isn’t required to enjoy the action in HIGH STAKES. With three cultures and more than one violin swapping places, it’s far more important to appreciate the history. And, of course, the scenery, while dangling a Stradivarius from a ski-slope cable-car.   

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