"D'Stair has composed a grippingly deconstructed version of the classic crime drama ... [painting] a dizzying picture that is deliciously complex ... a reinvention of a style that must be as much commandeered as it is renovated ... a thrillingly unconventional novel, that successfully reinvents an old literary convention from the inside ... [
The Goldberg Mutilations
] is a remarkably original achievement."
KIRKUS REVIEWS
Renowned pianist Glenn Gould has withdrawn from the concert stage. Desiring seclusion, his focus is now the recording studio, where he is at work on an experimental radio documentary. But this self-isolation is soon intruded upon in manners unimaginably macabre.
The corpse of a hotel chambermaid is discovered. Butchered by a madman's hatchet. Harsh reviews of Gould's final concert stuffed in the mouth of the corpse. His legendary rendering of Bach's
Goldberg Variations
repeating from the room's turntable.
As further victims come to light and the investigation helmed by the unorthodox Detective-Inspector Dziurzynski proceeds, Gould finds his security and very sanity at hazard; unable to believe he is the inspiration for a murderer's horrific acts while unable to prove he is not the murderer, himself.