Showing results by author "David Barber" in All Categories

Chances are you've heard Handel's Messiah at least once, if not many times. Maybe you've even performed it, as have countless musicians around the world. After all, it's probably one of the best-loved, and certainly one of the best-known, works in the standard repertoire. But if you think you know all there is to know about the great composers famous oratorio, think again. For example, it may surprise you to learn that: Handel's first impulse to compose the work came not from religious or even musical inspiration. It had a whole lot more to do with money.

David W. Barber has delighted fans around the world with Accidentals on Purpose, When the Fat Lady Sings, and other internationally best-selling books of musical humor. His best-selling Bach, Beethoven and the Boys chronicles the lives of the great (and not-so-great) composers, exploring their sex lives, exposing their foibles, and expanding on our understanding of these all-too-human creatures.

Dugan Heywood – an ex-journalist turned church musician – faces a new challenge in the staid university town of Grayston. When one of its prominent citizens is found dead, the police find a handy suspect in a young man with a criminal record. A man who not long ago was at odds with Dugan himself. But now the jailed suspect has turned to his old nemesis for help. And there are many others, some of them rich and powerful, who might have wanted the victim dead.

When corporate “restructuring” takes veteran journalist Dugan Heywood’s newspaper job, he takes a temp gig as a church musician as a welcome change of pace from his old beat of crime and corruption. But when a former lover’s sudden death makes him suspect murder even when the police don’t, Dugan must rely on his old investigative skills to find answers on his own. His digging soon upsets someof the rich and powerful in his staid old university town.