Thunderous applause greets the conclusion of young cellist Curtis Wilson’s performance. As he leaves the stage, FBI agents are waiting for him. They say he must leave now; his life is in danger. They offer witness protection – an anonymous existence that will ensure his safety but destroy his budding musical career.
Brendan Slocumb’s thriller, “The Dark Maestro,” unfolds the story of a child prodigy from Southeast Washington, D.C., a neighborhood riven by crime and violence. Curtis’ meteoric rise in the world of classical music defies stereotypes even as it reveals the power of the creative arts.
Curtis is raised by his father, Zippy, who runs drugs for the local crime syndicate. Various women come and go, but there is one who stays – Larissa. Though she is also active in the drug ring, Larissa cares for Curtis as if he were her own, picking him up from school and buying him comic books.
Why We Wrote This
Behind the crime novel plot lies the real story, about a father who has every strike against him yet wants to support his musical prodigy son. It is also about coming together as a family out of sheer love and appreciation for one another despite the chaos all around.
Curtis’ extraordinary talent is first recognized in kindergarten, when a charitable foundation donates instruments to his impoverished public school. Zippy doesn’t deny his son the opportunity to learn the cello, but he doesn’t support Curtis’ interest in music, either. To Zippy, it simply seems impractical.
“In Southeast, there were only three ways to succeed: you were a seven-foot-tall basketball player; you had the connections and the means to make a dope rapper; or you pushed product,” Slocumb writes.
After serving prison time for drug running, Zippy returns to the syndicate and is promoted to overseeing human-organ trafficking. As he sees it, this new position offers him a steady income to better provide for Curtis and Larissa. He wants what all caring parents want: to protect and provide for his family. But Zippy is arrested once again, this time by the feds, and chooses to turn state’s evidence with the promise of witness protection for him and his family. While this option might keep the three of them alive, it obliterates the life his son is building.
“So you will need to figure out something else to do. There’s more to life than music,” an FBI agent tells him.
But for Curtis, music is his life. It is his way of connecting with the world, coping with grief and rage, and communicating with others. Yes, he could practice his instrument alone in his government-provided apartment, but he cannot share his playing, and performing is a vital part of being a musician. The very circumstance designed to keep him alive threatens to extinguish his creative flame.
As “The Dark Maestro” recounts the activities of the crime syndicate, some of the passages are difficult to read. But they are not gratuitous. Slocumb is building the scaffolding for the real story, about a father who seems to have every strike against him, yet wants to learn to be a good person. It is about coming together as a family out of sheer love and appreciation for one another despite the chaos all around.
Curtis turns to his other creative passion – comic books, an art form that he can produce and distribute online using a pseudonym. This new artistic opportunity provides a means of dealing with his present circumstances as he designs superheroes who are not deterred by the world of evil that surrounds them – a lot like Curtis himself. Creating a whole series of comic books becomes a project that brings Curtis, Zippy, and Larissa together, each contributing their talents like musicians in an orchestra. In true superhero fashion, it is the three of them against the forces of evil.
And when it becomes apparent that the FBI is not progressing in the effort to bring down the crime syndicate, the superheroes step up. While some readers might find the conclusion a bit dubious, haven’t artists always blurred the line between real life and imagination?
