Spring Break

by Gerald Elias

Overview

When reclusive, blind violin pedagogue Daniel Jacobus is invited to speak at a seemingly innocuous symposium on Baroque music at a prestigious music conservatory, he has no idea he is about to become enmeshed in an entrenched culture of sexual harassment and its cover-up at the highest levels.

And when a renowned faculty member dies of apparent natural causes, only the curious behaviour of a violin student at Jacobus’s master class is an indication to him that something may be terribly amiss.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847518200
Publisher:	Severn House Publishers
Publication date:	10/01/2018
Series:	A Daniel Jacobus Mystery , #6
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

A graduate of Yale, GERALD ELIAS has been a Boston Symphony violinist, Associate Concertmaster of the Utah Symphony since 1988, Adjunct Professor of Music at the University of Utah, first violinist of the Abramyan String Quartet, and Music Director of the Vivaldi Candlelight concert series.

Editorial Reviews

"A very good entry in a reliable series"

Booklist

06/05/2017
In Elias’s intriguing sixth Daniel Jacobus mystery (after 2016’s Playing with Fire), the blind violinist’s former student Yumi Shinagawa is now adjunct professor of violin at the Kinderhoek Conservatory of Music in New York’s bucolic Cornwall County. Yumi invites Jacobus to the conservatory to conduct a master class during the institution’s annual Going for Baroque festival. Unfortunately, the irascible Jacobus gets into disputes with his students, and Yumi rebukes him when she hears him use sexist language (“Suck it up, buttercup”). The death of renowned composer and faculty member Aaron Schlossberg, apparently due to complications from his diabetes, leads to more trouble for Jacobus, who becomes involved in what develops into a murder investigation. Readers will enjoy spending time in the company of the curmudgeonly Jacobus, and many will welcome the absence of fisticuffs, car chases, and Glocks. Jacobus’s blindness adds an interesting angle, with suspects and witnesses classified and identified by the cadence and timbre of their voices. Agent: Josh Getzler, Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"A very good entry in a reliable series"

Booklist

2017-06-06
A blind violinist becomes a key player in a music school's faculty dysfunction.Daniel Jacobus (Playing with Fire, 2016, etc.) is probably the last musician Charles Hedge should have tapped as a last-minute replacement for Kinderhoek Conservatory of Music's "Going for Baroque" festival. But when Isaac Stern cancels his scheduled appearance two days before the festival's opening, Dean Hedge, who feels he has little choice, accepts adjunct professor Yumi Shinagawa's offer to persuade her mentor to fill in for Stern. It doesn't take long for Hedge to regret his decision. Cranky and impatient, Jacobus hectors fellow panelists Sybil Baker-Hulme, Bronislaw Tawroszewicz, and Harold Handy at the opening roundtable, reducing all three of the feuding faculty members' competing visions of Baroque performance to rubble. His social skills are as iffy as his pedagogical gifts. At a reception at Baker-Hulme and husband Aaron Schlossberg's gracious countryside home, he takes one bite of skewered squirrel, then dumps his entire plate of hand-foraged morels off the side of the deck. His worst offense, though, is his harsh critique of student violinist Audrey Rollins, who withdraws from Kinderhoek after fleeing the recital hall in embarrassment. The dean wants to send Jacobus packing. But when one of Hedge's staff is found dead in a practice room, the blind virtuoso may be the only one able to see the truth. Elias' sixth entry grafts an old-school curmudgeon detective onto a contemporary faculty farce. Despite his musical prowess, the musician isn't likable enough to draw much in the way of applause.

Kirkus Reviews