Violinist-turned-novelist weaves musical background into his newest murder mystery

Gerald Elias doesn’t make a secret of his impatience with bureaucracy. In fact, the orchestra musician-turned-writer deeply explores that trait through his cranky fictional sleuth, 70-something violin teacher Daniel Jacobus.

Jacobus, who is blind, relies on sharply tuned hearing as well as intuition to solve mysteries in the musical world. “He’s sort of my curmudgeonly doppelganger,” the writer admits.

Elias will perform and read from “Spring Break,” his sixth mystery novel, at an Oct. 26 Salt Lake City benefit to for the Salt Lake City chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby. (See box for ticket information.)

“Spring Break” unfolds the story of the complications, including sexual abuse charges, that arise after the sudden death of a faculty composer at an upstate New York music conservatory. Jacobus is pulled into the mystery at the invitation of another faculty member, Yumi Shinagawa, his former violin student and friend. The novel “grafts an old-school curmudgeon detective onto a contemporary faculty farce,” according to a Kirkus reviewer.

Elias’ first four mysteries in the series, which he launched in 2009 with “Devil’s Trill,” were inspired by the themes of death in renowned classical pieces. Earlier this year, he launched an audiobook of that first novel, featuring him playing violin excerpts in the musical voices of his characters, as well as narration by noted voice talent Jim Frangione.

Elias, a retired Utah Symphony associate concertmaster and Boston Symphony violinist, splits his time between Salt Lake City and Massachusetts. He teaches violin at the University of Utah school of music, and in the summers performs with the Boston Symphony at the Tanglewood Music Center. He and his wife have a cottage in West Stockbridge, which became a model for his protagonist’s house. “But ours is in a little better condition,” Elias says.

The latest two novels in the series draw inspiration from concertos in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, as well as current events. Campus sexual abuse allegations organically became part of “Spring Break” as Elias was writing the novel, based partially on stories reported in The Salt Lake Tribune and other newspapers, the writer says.

It’s a become a timely topic in the music world in an era when orchestras and music faculties have become more gender balanced. Elias’ novel considers the complicated dance of music student-teacher mentorships and the secrecy that can surround abuses of that power.

In addition, “Spring Break” includes a plot thread about mushroom foraging, in which Elias drew upon knowledge gained from his son, Jacob, who is studying for a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Cornell University.

Elias hopes readers will appreciate the fun of the mysteries while learning just a bit about musical classics.

He drew the positive attributes of his protagonist from his longtime friend Myra Ross, a violinist he grew up playing with in Long Island. She began losing her sight as a teenager and, by her mid-20s, was legally blind.

The character’s visual blindness functions as a metaphor for Jacobus’ disdain for the show-biz aspects of the classical music world. “By making him blind, it creates this much more direct metaphorical connection between him and the music, the music being sound,” Elias says.