dark corners of the classical music world. In 2020 he penned The Beethoven Sequence, a chilling political thriller. Elias's prize-winning essay, "War & Peace. And Music," excerpted from his insightful musical memoir, Symphonies & Scorpions, was the subject of his 2019 TED presentation.
Elias applied the Page 69 Test to Roundtree Days, his first full-length Western mystery, and reported the following:
Page 69 is devoted almost entirely to a dialogue between the book’s law enforcement cowboy hero, Jefferson Dance, interviewing one of the murder suspects, Alfie Moran, a glib British director of the immensely popular TV Western, Roundtree Days. Dance is trying to nail down Moran’s whereabouts at the moment that one of the co-stars of the show came to an untimely end.Learn more about the book and author at Gerald Elias's website.“All right, so we had a minor disagreement.” [Moran]Page 69 gives the reader a general sense of the book’s tone and of the personalities of three main characters: the hero Jefferson Dance, patient and polite but a no-fooling-around straight shooter; the successful TV director Alfie Moran, witty but evasive; and, in absentia, the actress Madison Hadcock, self-absorbed and thoroughly materialistic.
“About what?” [Dance]
“About her contract for next year. She wants her role in the show to expand geometrically and her salary to expand exponentially. I corrected her math, and reminded her that as her role was secondary to the star, there was no way she was going to be paid more than an orbiting planet should be paid. And after her father kills her lover-boy tree-hugger in episode six next year, between you and me I don’t know where we’re going with her character.”
“How did she respond?”
“The usual way. She started throwing things.”
“And what did you do?”
“I’ve got to deal with these prima donnas on a daily basis, mind you. So I did the only wise thing. I ducked and left, discretion being the better part of valor.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“A little after nine. I had what you might refer to as a downhome pancake-and-sausage breakfast with the Rotary at nine-thirty. Part of my civic duty. My heartburn will attest to my attendance.”
“Where was the breakfast?”
“As God is my witness, we’re standing on the very spot as we speak.”
“Are you staying here at the hotel?”
“You can’t be serious! Who’d want to stay in this creaking dump? I’ve been provided a manse out in Beauville. Pool, hot tub. All the amenities.”
“Beauville? Haven’t heard of that town.”
“It’s not a town. It’s a mirage. A gated community in the middle of the desert for the chronically affluent. Still under construction. The new West. They used to corral horses. Now they corral people.”
“Thank you for your time,” I said. “And good luck on your presentation.”
Even more important are Moran’s comments about Beauville, the new upscale housing development in the desert on the outskirts of Loomis City, Utah. “It’s not a town. It’s a mirage…They used to corral horses. Now they corral people.” In a broader sense, that statement represents the bone of contention afflicting Loomis City that forms the driving force of the plot of Roundtree Days. It’s the conflict between the “old West’s” small town traditional values of individual responsibility and rallying together to survive under the adversity of a harsh environment versus the “new West,” with its inundation of tourism, a retail and service economy, and wildly speculative land development.
The inspiration for Roundtree Days occurred during a cross-country drive on I-90. As a devoted fan of the Longmire television series I decided to stop in Buffalo, Wyoming, where it was filmed, in order to have breakfast at the famous Busy Bee Café. Little did I know that I had accidentally stumbled upon the annual Longmire weekend. The town was jampacked with fans from all over to take part in the weekend’s myriad cowboy activities and to gorge on Longmire swag that filled every Main Street storefront. It got me thinking about a story in which the barrier between fiction and reality became so clouded that people in the town looked toward the TV sheriff, rather than real law enforcement, to solve a series of perplexing crimes. Hence, my novel format for Roundtree Days: Each chapter is divided in half, representing two points of view: one, of the real lawman Jefferson Dance, who knows what he’s doing, and the other of the clueless actor, Conrad Michener, who plays the role of Vernon Roundtree in the TV series. In the end, Dance prevails, but not before they step uncomfortably, and sometimes hilariously, on each other’s toes.
Q&A with Gerald Elias.
--Marshal Zeringue
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