La Dolce Velocita

In the showroom of Ferrari of Atlanta. Have mercy, that was a sweet car.

“Fasten your seatbelt,” my driving coach said as he climbed behind the wheel.

He didn’t have tell me twice. He didn’t have to tell me at all. I knew exactly what a Ferrari 360 Modena was capable of doing — zero to sixty in 4.3 seconds, with a top speed of 190 mph. I also knew that after our first lap around the course, I’d switch places with him, and I’d be the one in the driver’s seat.

He looked over at me, surprised to see a notebook on my lap. “You’re gonna take notes?”

I nodded. “I’m a writer. We do that.”

And then I explained that I wrote mysteries, and that despite the grin on my face, I was in that bright yellow Ferrari doing serious research for my Tai Randolph & Trey Seaver series. After all, Trey—my Special Op trained, former SWAT co-protagonist—drives a 2008 Ferrari F430 coupe. And while my girl Tai has yet to get her eager fingers wrapped around its steering wheel, she eventually will. And I, her writer, need to be able to describe that experience.

I explained all this to my driving coach as he fastened his own seatbelt. “Cool,” he said. And then he slipped the car into gear, opened up the throttle, and my notebook hit the floor.

For the next sixty seconds, my life condensed to whiplash turns and lightning acceleration. I remember my stomach somersaulting with each twist and angle, the irresistible forces of velocity and trajectory combining in a giddy-making head rush. When we eventually slammed to a stop, my driver told me he’d been taking the car to only 80% of its capacity. And then he helped me out of my seat.

“Your turn,” he said, and grinned.

I slipped into the driver’s seat, feeling the vibrations of the engine, which is mounted right behind you, a V-8, pistons pumping, motor growling. Driving a Ferrari is a sensual delight—the leather seat molding to your body, the heat waves shimmering up from the engine, the throaty roar that peaks in a banshee shriek, like a chainsaw mated with a sonic boom. It’s primal, animal, atavistic, all blood rush and adrenaline surge. But a Ferrari isn’t some wanton, reckless beast—it wants to be controlled. And even on a simple agility course like I was running, you can feel how much performance the car is giving you, how much more it’s got to give. You push the accelerator a half an inch, and the car rewards you with a screaming, high-octane mile in return.

I drove my yellow and black fireball as cautiously as any stereotypical granny, considering it was worth over a hundred thousand dollars. But even at relatively tame speeds, I could feel its exquisite responsiveness, as if it were a live thing, as if it could read my mind. My coach warned me to keep my eyes on the lane and not on the obstacles, because the car would go where I looked. He also guided me through the turns—when to slow, when to punch it—and I had to trust him, because every instinct I had was screaming turn-turn-turn-now-now-now and he was saying wait-wait-wait. But when I trusted his instructions, I could feel the car moving into the curve, aligning itself with the centripetal and centrifugal forces. Becoming, indeed, one with the road.

I climbed out of that Italian leather seat with a true understanding of “la dolce velocita”: the sweet speed. And I know my girl Tai is going to be utterly blown away when she finally gets to drive this work of automotive art for herself. She’ll forgive every inconvenient corpse I’ve ever dropped in her path, I am certain of it.

Crimes Against the Humanities

As often happens, the pieces of “Assault & Reverie” — my latest Tai & Trey story — came together during a long car ride while I listened to NPR (shout out to WSVH, my hometown station!). Intrigued by what I was hearing, I couldn’t resist concocting a plot that included these fascinating elements. The result was a work of fiction, with some true-life happenings grounding it in possibility, if not reality.

Warning: Spoilers Below!

The idea of a snatched violin was inspired by the real-life assault and robbery of violinist and concertmaster Frank Almond, who shared his story on The Moth Radio Hour, a radio show from PRX. There are a few similarities between my fictional version and his actual one—Almond was accosted by a TASER-wielding assailant, and the eventual identification of the thief was cinched through the use of AFIDs (and the fact that the robber left his driver’s license in the case with the stolen violin). There are many differences, however. Recovering Almond’s violin took almost two weeks, and the crime was solved through leather-on-pavement policing, not deus ex flying machina.

However, the aerial data Trey uses to solve the crime—and the airplane that provided it—are not fictional. A similar airplane is a keystone of Persistent Surveillance System’s Community Support Program, and the photographs it provides have been used to solve crimes from burglary to murder (and yes, one theft was solved in less than thirty minutes). I learned about it on RadioLab, a show from WNYC Studios, which discussed not only the effectiveness of the surveillance, but the surrounding privacy issues, something Trey and Tai possess very different ideas about. Having them bring their different perspectives to the issue was an interesting way for me to work through my own conflicted feelings, as I believe very much in both law and order and individual privacy. My literary use of such a plane in Atlanta, however, was entirely fictional, as was the idea that someone in the security loop might have let crucial information out of the bag (there is zero evidence that such a thing has ever happened in real life). Luckily, you can visit the company’s website to learn about their real crime-fighting missions, including their privacy statement, and leave my problematic fictional plane heading for a fictional horizon.

While researching this story, I also learned a great deal about Stradivari violins. The Brancaccio Strad featured in this story, alas, really was lost during an air raid in Berlin. I resurrected it as an act of hope, as a way to let this magnificent instrument live once again, and was heartened to see that a piece of it may have been recently recovered and identified. Even if it will never again make music, I hope it will remind us of the great evil that was overcome by the Allied powers at such profound cost, and of the beauty that somehow survived, broken but lovely, in those ashes. May we never forget those horrors, so that we may never repeat them. May we always remember the service of the Allied women and men, so that we may always honor them.

To hear Frank Almond’s story in his own words, go here: https://themoth.org/stories/a-violins-life

To learn more about the Brancaccio Stradivarius, go here: https://timothyjuddviolin.com/tag/brancaccio-stradivarius/

To see the (possible) piece of that violin that may have been recovered, go here: https://maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/333195-could-this-be-a-stradivari-neck/

To listen to the show “Eye in the Sky” about aerial surveillance, go here: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky

To visit the Persistent Surveillance Systems website, go here:

And to get your very own copy of Assault & Reverie and Other Stories, click HERE.