Playing with Fire

July 18, 2016
Elias’s pleasant fifth Daniel Jacobus mystery (after 2012’s Death and Transfiguration) finds the aging blind violinist and wisecracking curmudgeon enjoying a Christmas weekend at home in the Berkshires with former pupil Yumi, now an internationally known star violinist, and longtime cellist friend Nathaniel, an acclaimed consultant on musical-instrument fraud. When a neighbor, violin-maker Amadeo Borlotti, phones late on Christmas Eve and asks if he, Borlotti, can come over to talk, Jacobus brushes him off. On Christmas morning, Jacobus and friends are shocked to learn that Borlotti’s house has burned down and he has vanished. The local police soon determine that no violins were in the wreckage and that Borlotti had a lot more money than his modest occupation could provide. The subsequent discovery of a body in a bass case raises the stakes. Jacobus indulges his inner Sherlock in a low-key tale that examines music as metaphor, provides insights into the creation of world-class violins, and exposes how some people can turn arson and insurance fraud into lucrative careers.

July 1, 2016
Christmas 1992 brings blind violinist Daniel Jacobus (Death and Transfiguration, 2012, etc.) a mystery that creeps ever nearer his Berkshires retreat.Even celebrants less Grinch-like than Jacobus aren't eager to have their yuletide festivities disrupted, so it's perfectly understandable that the crusty violinist puts off Amadeo Borlotti, a violin repairer in nearby Egremont Falls, when he pleads an urgent but unspecified reason to venture out in the snow to meet Jacobus. Instead, Jacobus asks Borlotti to come the following day and goes back to playing trios with his cellist friend, Nathaniel Williams, and his protege, Yumi Shinagawa. Next day, predictably, is too late; on Christmas night, Borlotti's house burns to the ground, and he vanishes. The blaze is as suspicious as the disappearance, since authorities combing the rubble find no sign of any stringed instruments in Borlotti's shop, indicating that they must have been removed from the scene before the fire. By the time Borlotti's corpse makes an appearance in a floridly dramatic scene, it's become clear that he's been involved in creating fake documents authenticating Stradivariuses that aren't--and maybe even crafting a few of the phony fiddles himself. The investigation will take Jacobus, who assembles jigsaw puzzles by touch alone, on a whirlwind trip to Italy, bring him up against some wholly unconvincing professional criminals, and give the mysterious arsonist a much more prominent role in his life before he's finally able to move on.Readers who aren't unduly put off by the hero, whose fictional ancestors include both Sherlock Holmes and Ebenezer Scrooge, will enjoy a most unseasonal fable of the little insurance fraud that grew and grew. Merry Christmas.

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August 1, 2016
Daniel Jacobus was a concert violinist until an illness took his sight overnight. Now he teaches violin and, as an unofficial sideline, solves mysteries. His latest case hits close to home: an old friend has vanished, and the man's house has burned down. Has the man been kidnapped? Was the house fire arson or accident? Has Daniel's old friend been keeping a part of his life hidden? Was he, after all, a crook? If you took the basic character traits of Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme (his crustiness, his reclusiveness, his intolerance of stupidity) and crossed them with the sharp wit and imaginative leaps of logic of Sherlock Holmes, you would wind up with someone very much like Daniel Jacobus. Elias, a professional violinist and conductor, keeps us guessing until the book's final pages. This is the fifth outing for Jacobus in what has become a consistently entertaining series. Keep 'em coming.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)