Check out my latest book on Amazon:
THE AXEL FILES - The Fiddler’s Strad

Morello’s Stradivarius

Antonius Stradivari was the premiere maker of string instruments during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only six hundred and fifty Stradivarius instruments still exist; each is worth millions of dollars. Like many historic masterpieces, these instruments, particularly the violins, have become the targets of thieves. Unfortunately for the thieves, Stradivarius violins are nearly impossible to fence. As such, only a handful have been stolen, usually by amateurs.

Rather than planned Thomas Crown-like burglaries, these thefts tend to be robberies of opportunity. Eventually, most of these crimes are solved. The robber typically hides his prize in a closet. When he dies, a relative usually finds the instrument while cleaning. But this was not the case for the missing Morello Stradivarius.

Edith Morello was once considered the finest female violinist of the twentieth century. A designation she resented bitterly for adding the word female to the description. Edith Morello was a great artist, but she was also a nasty, cheap, abusive prima donna who expected those around her to be at her beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Morello died at age ninety-one in 1995. There were a handful of people who accepted Morello’s abusive behaviour because they respected her long-lost talent. Others stayed because Morello promised them her prized violin.

In the end, the violin was stolen a week before Morello died. Those who took Morello's abuse were further disappointed when they learned she left her entire substantial estate, including the missing violin, to charity.

The NYPD, the FBI, and Interpol failed to solve the case. The violin has been missing for thirty years. Only one man can find the violin. That man is Private Investigator Axel Webb. It’s not a case Axel wants to take, but it is a case he has to take. His old nemesis, the Russian gangster Vladimir Bok, figures Axel owes him for helping destroy his profitable art forgery ring. Bok’s mistress, Lena Petrenko, a violinist of note in Moscow, wants the Morello Stradivarius, and she wants her lover, Bok, to get it for her.

Check out my latest book on Amazon:
THE AXEL FILES - The Fiddler’s Strad

Morello’s Stradivarius

Antonius Stradivari was the premiere maker of string instruments during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only six hundred and fifty Stradivarius instruments still exist; each is worth millions of dollars. Like many historic masterpieces, these instruments, particularly the violins, have become the targets of thieves. Unfortunately for the thieves, Stradivarius violins are nearly impossible to fence. As such, only a handful have been stolen, usually by amateurs.

Rather than planned Thomas Crown-like burglaries, these thefts tend to be robberies of opportunity. Eventually, most of these crimes are solved. The robber typically hides his prize in a closet. When he dies, a relative usually finds the instrument while cleaning. But this was not the case for the missing Morello Stradivarius.

Edith Morello was once considered the finest female violinist of the twentieth century. A designation she resented bitterly for adding the word female to the description. Edith Morello was a great artist, but she was also a nasty, cheap, abusive prima donna who expected those around her to be at her beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Morello died at age ninety-one in 1995. There were a handful of people who accepted Morello’s abusive behaviour because they respected her long-lost talent. Others stayed because Morello promised them her prized violin.

In the end, the violin was stolen a week before Morello died. Those who took Morello's abuse were further disappointed when they learned she left her entire substantial estate, including the missing violin, to charity.

The NYPD, the FBI, and Interpol failed to solve the case. The violin has been missing for thirty years. Only one man can find the violin. That man is Private Investigator Axel Webb. It’s not a case Axel wants to take, but it is a case he has to take. His old nemesis, the Russian gangster Vladimir Bok, figures Axel owes him for helping destroy his profitable art forgery ring. Bok’s mistress, Lena Petrenko, a violinist of note in Moscow, wants the Morello Stradivarius, and she wants her lover, Bok, to get it for her.

Check out my latest book on Amazon:
THE AXEL FILES - The Fiddler’s Strad

Morello’s Stradivarius

Antonius Stradivari was the premiere maker of string instruments during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only six hundred and fifty Stradivarius instruments still exist; each is worth millions of dollars. Like many historic masterpieces, these instruments, particularly the violins, have become the targets of thieves. Unfortunately for the thieves, Stradivarius violins are nearly impossible to fence. As such, only a handful have been stolen, usually by amateurs.

Rather than planned Thomas Crown-like burglaries, these thefts tend to be robberies of opportunity. Eventually, most of these crimes are solved. The robber typically hides his prize in a closet. When he dies, a relative usually finds the instrument while cleaning. But this was not the case for the missing Morello Stradivarius.

Edith Morello was once considered the finest female violinist of the twentieth century. A designation she resented bitterly for adding the word female to the description. Edith Morello was a great artist, but she was also a nasty, cheap, abusive prima donna who expected those around her to be at her beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Morello died at age ninety-one in 1995. There were a handful of people who accepted Morello’s abusive behaviour because they respected her long-lost talent. Others stayed because Morello promised them her prized violin.

In the end, the violin was stolen a week before Morello died. Those who took Morello's abuse were further disappointed when they learned she left her entire substantial estate, including the missing violin, to charity.

The NYPD, the FBI, and Interpol failed to solve the case. The violin has been missing for thirty years. Only one man can find the violin. That man is Private Investigator Axel Webb. It’s not a case Axel wants to take, but it is a case he has to take. His old nemesis, the Russian gangster Vladimir Bok, figures Axel owes him for helping destroy his profitable art forgery ring. Bok’s mistress, Lena Petrenko, a violinist of note in Moscow, wants the Morello Stradivarius, and she wants her lover, Bok, to get it for her.

The Axel Files: Finding Lunia: Woman With A Fan

https://www.amazon.com/Axel-Files-Finding-Lunia-Woman-ebook/dp/B0CRJ3TGSS
Trailer: https://youtu.be/cQiCtxNFXWk?si=ddepUzLAT1Vt8INh

In my business, you meet all kinds of people; some, let’s call them civilians, are ordinary, what the politicians call “folks;” then there are the characters, the peculiar sorts, people with strange peccadilloes: what an old friend of mine might call, “people who scare the horses.” Some, let's call them “the desperate:” come to me because they find themselves in a situation, sometimes of their own making and other times... well... let’s just say, imposed upon them. In each case, they have secrets: something they’d like to hide from the authorities and me, things like felonies, misdemeanours, mishaps, or misunderstandings. These cases are always about one of two things: money or women, but sometimes neither money nor women come in the form you'd expect, which brings me to the case of "Finding Lunia."

It all started one day when Jacob Lerner, a young Aussie artist nicknamed Garbo, walked into my office carrying a painting. Not just any canvas, but a masterpiece he claimed he’d found in the trash in a Montmartre back alley. If the artwork was the original, it was one of five masterpieces stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris on a warm Spring night in 2010 by the renowned second-story burglar, L’Araignée, The Spider.

The painting is a Modigliani portrait of Lunia Czechowska, one of five expressionist masterpieces stolen by L’Araignée and supposedly dumped in the trash by a nervous associate who was supposed to hold onto the canvases for safekeeping, not that anyone in their right mind believed someone would throw one hundred million dollars worth of art into the trash. Usually, I am hired to find some lost, stolen or misappropriated object, but in this case, the item found me, or so my Aussie client claimed. If you believe the story that played out in a Paris courtroom in 2017, then it would make sense to believe the story told to me by Jacob Lerner. All I had to do was prove the painting wasn’t a forgery. The trouble is twenty percent of the canvases in the world’s most prestigious museums are fakes, and Modigliani is one of the most frequently forged artists. Money and women: this case involves both, but not necessarily in the ways you’d expect.

Axel Webb, Private Investigator

Sam is back! This month we start a new series going back to the late 1940s for the adventures of the quintessential private detective, Sam Spade. Hopefully, the recent Monseiur Spade television series will spark a return to stories, TV series, and films about people, problems, and puzzles, rather than fantasy, men in capes, and movies about children's toys. To support this channel, investigate my take on the private detective genre with my latest, The Axel Files: Finding Lunia.
Jerry Bader
Author and Screenwriter