Music as grace notes in James Ziskin's Ellie Stone novels

HALLIE EPHRON: When I first heard about James Ziskin's Ellie Stone novels, he had a new one out which was set in Hollywood in the 1960s, I knew I had to meet him. I grew up in Hollywood in the 60's and I'd set my latest novel there, too. He was getting an amazing reception to the series--his books have won the Anthony and Macavity awards, and been finalists for Lefty, Edgar, and Barry Awards. Not too shabby! I just finished reading the latest, TURN TO STONE (launching June 21) and it's simply terrific.

So I'm delighted to welcome him to Jungle Red, and have him weigh in on music, and the role it plays in the Ellie Stone novels.

JAMES ZISKIN: I write a series of traditional mysteries set in the early 1960s, featuring plucky young newspaper reporter Ellie Stone. Since the first book, music has played a supporting role in all the stories. Not necessarily front and center, but important just the same. Whether it’s a clue tied to some classical records maliciously shattered in STYX & STONE, or simply Ellie’s uncanny ability to name a piece of music at the drop of a needle, you’ll always find music in an Ellie Stone mystery. It’s no different in the seventh installment, TURN TO STONE, coming out January 21, 2020.
Ellie moves around quite a bit. That’s because she’s living and working in an upstate New York mill town and I wanted to avoid Cabot Cove syndrome. You know, that disorder characterized by too many murders in a small village? Ellie has solved crimes in her adopted upstate home of New Holland, New York City, the Adirondacks, Los Angeles, Saratoga Springs, and now—in TURN TO STONE—Florence, Italy.

It’s September 1963. Ellie is in Florence to attend an academic symposium honoring her late father. Just as she arrives on the banks of the Arno, however, she learns that her host, Professor Alberto Bondinelli, has drown in the river under suspicious circumstances. Then a suspected rubella outbreak leaves Ellie and nine of the symposium participants quarantined in villa outside the city with little to do but tell stories to entertain themselves. Making the best of their confinement, the men and women spin tales and gorge themselves on fine Tuscan food and wine until the quarantine can be lifted. And as they do, long-buried secrets about Bondinelli rise to the surface, and Ellie must figure out if one or more of her companions is capable of murder.

That’s the setup. But what about the music? I’m just getting to that. Since Ellie is in Italy, there’s bound to be Italian music. Let’s take the pieces mentioned in the book in order.

1. Ellie writes in her preamble to the story that Neil Sedaka, Paul Anka, Andy Williams, and Petula Clark all had hits in Italy in 1963. And they sang those songs in Italian. 

2. The first song that appears in the book is an anti-fascist anthem of sorts, “Bella ciao!” The song has its roots in the nineteenth century as a folk song, but was adopted and adapted during the Second World War by the partisans and the anti-fascist resistance that sprang up in 1943-44. It’s a catchy tune and an enduring song of protest and rebellion. Have a listen.

Here are the words to the first stanza and refrain:

Una mattina mi son alzato,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao!
Una mattina mi son alzato
e ho trovato l'invasor.

O partigiano portami via,
o bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
o partigiano portami via
che mi sento di morir.

One morning I awakened,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao!
One morning I awakened
And I found the invader.

Oh partisan carry me away,
oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao
oh partisan carry me away
Because I feel death approaching

3. “Volare.” Lucio Bevilacqua is the adorable Marxist, one of the ten academics trapped by the quarantine. And he’s the one who plays the guitar. Not many complete songs, mind you, as he never seems satisfied with the tuning of his strings. After he plays “Bella ciao,” which is not well received by those with different political persuasions, Lucio tries to lower the political tensions by playing “Volare.” Everyone groans at the overplayed hit, and Lucio abandons the song halfway through.

4. Throughout the book, Lucio spends a lot of time flirting good-naturedly with Ellie. His courting usually takes the form of a theatrical serenade on bended knee. And the love ballades are always taken from Italian pop songs of the era.

“Eri un’abitudine, dolcissima abitudine, che vorrei reprendere per sognar” (This is the Italian version of “Can’t Get Used to Losing You.”)

“Mi sono inamorato di te” (I’ve fallen in love with you.)

“La ragazza del mio cuore sei” (The girl of my heart is you.)

“Non dimenticar che t’ho voluto tanto bene” (Don’t forget that I loved you so.) This is the Italian version of a song made famous by Nat King Cole.

5. When the quarantined residents tell their stories for entertainment, Lucio is there to accompany them on his guitar. For the tale about a Jew who considers—then rejects—converting to Christianity, Lucio spontaneously strums a tune that Ellie recognizes as part of the third movement of Mahler’s first symphony, the “Titan.” It’s a distinctly Jewish theme, a jaunty bit that makes you want to dance. For the first time, she’s impressed by his considerable talent and wit.

6. Professor Bondinelli’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Mariangela, arrives at the villa from her school in England, and Ellie takes her under her wing. The two discuss photography, the losses of their fathers, and music. Now, this is late September 1963, and Mariangela—like many girls her age in the UK—is crazy about the Beatles. Of course they Beatles were virtually unknown in the US until a couple of months later.

Mariangela and Ellie manage to scare up a portable record player at the villa, and the girl treats Ellie to her favorite three songs in the world: “Ask Me Why,” “Please Please Me,” and “She Loves You.” With the pure, unbridled enthusiasm of youth, Mariangela plays the songs over and over, and Ellie indulges her her passion, especially in light of the recent loss of her father.

Why do I include so much music in my books? I’ll answer that with the very same Shakespeare quote that Ellie butchers above. He said it better than I could ever hope to.

“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”
(The Merchant of Venice, 5.1.91-7)


TURN TO STONE launches January 21, 2020. Available in bookstores, libraries, and popular online portals.
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James W. Ziskin, Jim to his friends, is the author of the seven Ellie Stone mysteries. His books have been finalists for the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity awards. His fourth book, Heart of Stone, won the 2017 Anthony for Best Paperback Original and the 2017 Macavity (Sue Feder Memorial) award for Best Historical Mystery. He’s published short stories in various anthologies and in The Strand Magazine. Before he turned to writing, he worked in New York as a photo-news producer and writer, and then as director of NYU’s Casa Italiana. He spent fifteen years in the Hollywood postproduction industry, running large international operations in the subtitling and visual effects fields. His international experience includes two years working and studying in France, extensive time in Italy, and more than three years in India. He speaks Italian and French. Jim can be reached through his website www.jameswziskin.com or on Twitter @jameswziskin.

HALLIE: What Jim didn't talk about is ITALY! Turn To Stone is nearly as much fun as taking the trip to Florence yourself. But since he's talking about music, my mind wanders to the authors for whom music is a central part of their stories. And of course Deborah Crombie, for sure. And Ian Rankin. And of course Colin Dexter's opera-loving Inspector Morse.

And I want to hear about his years in Italy, because it's so clear that his view of it (not to mention his accent) belies an insider's perspective.

Crime Plus Music

LUCY BURDETTE: If you love music, and you love the dark side of crime fiction, you will love today's post from Red friend Naomi Rand. She's introducing a new anthology called CRIME PLUS MUSIC. I'll let her tell it...welcome Naomi!

 NAOMI RAND: People love to say that modern life comes complete with its own soundtrack.  The same goes for the twenty stories in a new collection, CRIME PLUS MUSIC out this week from Three Rooms Press. The book, edited by mystery writer and Wall Street Journal music reviewer Jim Fusilli has gotten great pre-pub reviews. We talked to Jim and four of the twenty contributors, David Liss, Naomi Rand, Alison Gaylin and Gary Phillips.

Why the mix of music and crime, Jim? 

JIM FUSILLI: I had been thinking about doing a short-story collection of my own on the theme.  I’ve done a few stories for other anthologies, and I had the sections on the “Sinatra” character in my novel “Narrows Gate,” which was set in the war years, so I thought I could cover a lot of ground and a lot of different kinds of music.  But I realized it would be a fun project if I asked writers who I knew loved music to participate.  I knew it would be a more diverse collection than if I did it on my own.  It would be more fun for readers.

LUCY: Naomi, your story is about sexual assault. Is there a reason you chose this theme?   

NAOMI: Growing up in New York City when I did, you had to learn pretty early to deal with the way strange men interacted with you. Catcalls were really the least of it. I developed a definite attitude in order to defend myself from harassment. Not that it always worked. It’s a theme that resonates with me. So much so, in fact, that it’s central to my new stand-alone mystery, Girl Out of Time. As for the story I wrote, The Misfits, when Jim asked me to be part of the collection I thought of an excellent piece by Jason Cherkis that was written for HuffPost. It’s about Jackie Fox who was in the Runaways. She was sexually assaulted by their manager, raped in public and then had to leave the band. There were all sorts of stories told about it at the time, but now the truth has finally come out. I took that as the jumping off point. I will say that the beauty of writing it as fiction is that I got to write the ending my way.

NAOMI: David, your main character gains surprising strength from listening to music. It’s a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde story. Is that what you see music doing, changing the listener in some basic way?

DAVID LISS: I'd say that our identification with music can sharpen our emotions or resolve.  I think this is especially true for younger people, who often feel like songs are directly "speaking" to them, but to some degree, that capacity to identify with a song or songs never really goes away.  Of course, you can argue that the same can be said for books, film, the visual arts, but unlike other media, music is both external and deeply personal.   The ambiguity of lyrics and the unquantifiable emotional impact of tune and instrumentation and arrangement all allow for much more interpretation.  So, in my story, I don't think that the music pushes my character in any direction, so much as he draws strength and determination from a song that he feels mirrors his psychological state.

NAOMI: Gary, your story is a surreal trip down memory lane that features a reckoning with your main character’s past. You chose to write from the point of view of a musician, can you talk about that, and what led you to take him on that particular journey? 

GARY PHILLIPS: The musician in my story, Church Gibson, is inspired by the late Rick James, the King of Funk. Here was a cat who started out to be the next Hendrix and had finger-popping songs topping the charts and headlining arenas. As is too often the case in such lives, he couldn’t escape his demons, his excesses.  Not only did he have a stroke, not helped by the copious amounts of cocaine he abused, but he’d also done time for, a la Misery, imprisoning and beating a woman in his Hollywood Hills pad.  Who better then to model a very flawed individual with regrets and this soundtrack he’s been hired to compose is a way for him to redeem himself?

NAOMI: Allison, your story features the punk scene, specifically the band X which was/is fronted by a strong woman lead singer. Considering the theme of the story, it definitely resonates. Tell us a little more about that.

ALISON GAYLIN: I've been a fan of X ever since I was a teenager, and one of the big things that resonated with me about the band back then was Exene Cervenka -- she was so tough and cool in a way that many female 80s pop stars weren't. She had this wonderful brassy voice and I loved the way she harmonized with John Doe, and they both were such great writers. Their lyrics are incredible. The song mentioned in my short story, Johnny Hit and Run Paulene, is about a man who begins attacking women after taking a drug that makes him need to have sex every hour on the hour. It's an incredibly disturbing and upsetting song and, I thought, a great basis for a female revenge story.

NAOMI: Music is a big part of many people’s lives. How about you? Do you have your own personal playlist? Has music ever led you to discover something unexpected in yourself?

Crime Plus Music’s  line-up includes a stellar cast of mystery writers, among them Val McDermid, Peter Blauner, and Erica Wright. And there are contributors who have deep roots in the world of pop music, Galadrielle Allman, (Duane’s daughter), and Willy Vlautin (who fronts the band Richmond Fontaine.)