The Metronome – Pavel Rostin has taken too many chances. Once a promising physicist, he abandoned science for finance and risked everything on a speculative venture. Careless and rogue, he gambled with his personal relationships.
As Pavel tries to pick up the pieces of his life, a call from Russia informs him that his father is dead.
When Pavel follows his father’s footsteps trying to solve the mystery of his death, he turns up some inexplicable clues. The investigation draws him deeper and deeper into his family’s past – and his country’s future.
From starving 1941 Leningrad to free-wheeling Moscow of the mid-1990s to bubbly 2006 Wall Street, Pavel uncovers a web of money, murder, revenge and evidence of a plot involving the world’s superpowers. The choices of right and wrong don’t look as clear cut as in newspaper headlines. But is he just a pawn in someone else’s game?
The Metronome is the first book in The Counterpoint trilogy and a prequel to the earlier published The Great Game. The last book in the trilogy, The Outer Circle, will be published in April of 2015. The Great Game and The Metronome are largely independent, with only a minor overlap amongst the characters. The Outer Circle brings the heroes of the two earlier books together to conclude their journey.
Review – The Metronome
As Book One of a trilogy, The Metronome‘s subtitle warns that thiswill be no light fling and that events will likely be expanded byfurther books in the series. That said, expect a novel of internationalintrigue that stands well on its own while providing a prequel to thealready-published The Great Game.
That the ‘oldcountry’ (Russia)permeates much of The Metronome is evident from its first paragraph,which sets an atmosphere of intrigue: “I hate when phone rings in themiddle of the night. It must have come from the old country, where a knock in the darkoften meant that a black car is waiting downstairs and someone will disappear.”Pavel’s father was a detective, so Pavel is used to family secrets, eventhough he’s now far from his Russian homeland. But the death of his father brings him back to Russia;there to uncover a mystery that will follow him, in turn, back to the U.S.
The Metronome‘s theme of memories thatspring up is just one facet ofPavel’s experience that brings readers along forwhat turns out to be a wild ride of international intrigue, family secrets, andmystery. Don’t expect a simple or easily-defined novel, here: The Metronomeis a link between Russiaand the West, between long-hidden family secrets and a son’s new life in hisnew country, and between a detective’s investigation into a murder and its tiesto the past and to the future. The book’s twists and turns are multifaceted anddelicately woven and will delight readers who eschew the usual shallow leisureread for something richer and steeped in other cultures. In this, TheMetronome shines, analyzing Pavel’s life and the final decision that willset him free, once and for all.
D. Donovan, Senior Book Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
From the Author – The Metronome
A century ago the world rushed into a conflict triggered by events in Eastern Europe. All sides, driven by patriotic fervor, welcomed the escalation. Two great wars and almost 100 million deaths later, most of that fervor was gone. Time has passed, some lessons have been forgotten and the world is again caught in a cycle of demonizing each other and ratcheting conflicts by financial, economic and military means.
But perhaps before we go further, we should step back and try to look at the world through the eyes of others. Not because we’ll necessarily agree with them, but because the world is complex and to better understand it we should grasp that other points of view exist and that our actions are not always perceived in Moscow and Beijing the same way they are portrayed in Washington, D.C.
This book was intended as a historic fiction set in the near past. The characters are made up but the backdrop of the events is real and factual. You won’t find power grid failures, zombies, vampires, or cool James Bond-types. The protagonists are regular, imperfect, even flawed people that face difficult circumstances. What moral choices they make will ultimately affect many. Because “even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”
