Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias. New York: Minotaur Books, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-312-54181-1

A great mystery with classical music as its primary focus and background milieu. Reading books with a musical backdrop is one of my favorite reading pleasures, so this book was great fun!

The only downer is the crusty misanthropic nature of the primary character, an over the hill, nearly blind, chain-smoking violin teacher, who (at first glance) seems to hate teaching, hate his life, hate his pupils, pretty much everything. But eventually you warm up to him, since he does have the proverbial heart of gold, sort of, maybe.

Definitely recommended for anyone who, like me, likes musically oriented fiction.

Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick

Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-06-089052-0

This book may be more for women and girls than for men and boys, but I enjoyed it, nonetheless. It's also for music lovers, set as it is, in the girl's school in eighteenth-century Venice where Antonio Vivaldi, the so-called “Red Priest,” served as Maestro extraordinaire.

The story centers around one of the orphan foundlings, growing up as a gifted violinist, but constantly hungering for knowledge of her family, and her missing mother. Who might they be? Why was she abandoned on the steps of the school? Will she find love? Will she find her family? Will she be allowed to take her musical gifts out into the wider world?

It's a passionate story set in the lush, gilded Venice of the time. Not great literature perhaps, but definitely worth a read.