Greed, lust, power, and murder are words not commonly associated with the world of classical music. Yet this is the setting into which blind Daniel Jacobus, a reclusive, cantankerous violin teacher living in self-imposed exile in rural New England, is inexorably drawn. For Jacobus, who spends his time chain smoking, listening to old LPs, and berating students in the hope they will flee, the evils of that world are epitomized by the "Piccolino" Stradivarius,...

"As the New Magini String Quartet prepares for a performance of Schubert's masterpiece, "Death and the Maiden," which it hopes will resuscitate its faltering career, someone starts picking off members of the string quartet a la Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Dogged by internal dissension and by a potentially devastating lawsuit from its fired second violinist, the famed New Magini String Quartet is on the brink of professional and personal...

"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. When a renowned faculty member dies of apparent natural causes, only the curious behavior of a violin student at Jacobus's master class is an idication that something...