Brendan Slocumb

Brendan Slocumb brings the ear of a violinist and music educator to mysteries about authorship, inheritance, and power. Symphony of Secrets moves between 1920s Manhattan and the present, where music professor Bern Hendricks is asked to authenticate a newly discovered work by celebrated composer Frederick Delaney. Bern and his technology-minded colleague Eboni find evidence that Delaney's reputation may rest on music created by Josephine Reed, a gifted Black composer whom history obscured. The novel treats musical analysis as investigative method: patterns, notation, and listening expose what an institution has protected. Doubleday published Symphony of Secrets in 2023, following Slocumb's debut, The Violin Conspiracy. The audiobook is performed by Chanté McCormick and Slocumb himself. His degree in music education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and more than two decades teaching music give the fictional scholarship practical texture. Slocumb uses the thriller form to ask who receives credit, who controls archives, and how recognition can be restored without simplifying the artist behind the work.