USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2011-03-17-mozart-conspiracy_N.htm

'The Mozart Conspiracy' hits thrilling, suspenseful notes

3/20/2011

By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY

The Mozart Conspiracy is actually one in a six-book series. All have been published in the U.K. The Doomsday Prophecy will be released in the USA in 2012. And its cinematic value hasn't gone unnoticed. It's been optioned by Amber Entertainment, a production company headed by mega film producers Ileen Maisel (The Golden Compass) and Mark Ordesky (Lord of the Rings). Title: 'The Mozart Conspiracy' Author: Scott Mariani Publisher/price: Touchstone, 337 pp., $24.99

Freemasons, the secret society that has inspired numerous novelists including Dan Brown and Brad Meltzer, take center stage in The Mozart Conspiracy, an internationally acclaimed novel — author Scott Mariani lives in Wales — that's finally storming America's shores.

Meet British Special Air Service officer Ben Hope. He's about to get caught up in a centuries-old conspiracy that will have him matching wits and trading gunfire with an ancient society that may have been responsible for the murder of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The "official" cause of Mozart's death was determined to be acute rheumatic fever, but modern hypotheses include the possibility he was poisoned. That theory was at the center of the play and movie Amadeus and blames a rival composer. But it's another theory — that Mozart was murdered by the Freemasons as punishment for his weaving Freemason secrets into his opera The Magic Flute— that Mariani explores.