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.)
July 1, 2017
The sixth in the Daniel Jacobus series finds the blind violin teacher and amateur sleuth taking a speaking engagement at a prestigious music conservatory that's hosting a symposium on baroque music. When a member of the conservatory's faculty dies, the question is: Was it natural causes, or murder? Elias, a professional violinist and composer, does a fine job of establishing the story's musical frame, and he's a darned good storyteller, too: the mystery here is tightly constructed and very clever (readers should be wary of thinking they know where it's going, because it sometimes takes sharp, unexpected turns). In Jacobus we have an imaginative, ornery, reclusive, witty protagonista guy who has bits of other mystery leads in him but who feels at the same time wholly original. A very good entry in a reliable series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)