Of course, 4,000 people would also be alive who are now dead. In the course of writing about that destruction between 2000 and 2006, I saw some terrible things, experienced some frightful emotions, and internalized shocking facts about the world around me. It would’ve been easy to become depressed or to descend further into the post-traumatic stress disorder that nipped at my mind quite frequently.

Mozart saved me from that. I used to listen to his music in my armored car as I drove through the dangerous roads of the West Bank or on my iPod as I huddled in my Gaza hotel after a day dodging through refugee camps where Palestinians and Israelis were fighting it out. The Maestro’s great works soothed me, enabled me to achieve an emotional calm, when all around me was horror and chaos.

I didn’t use the music to ignore what was happening. Rather the music kept me open to the world around me. I didn’t have to shut out the horror; I could watch it and try to understand it. Because the great Wolfgang was sending me musical signals about the beauty and peace that exists at the core of every man. We only need listen to Mozart to know that he speaks to this part of us, and his immense popularity and immediacy is a sign that it truly is something we all possess.

There’s a good deal of research about Mozart’s music and its phenomenal ability to calm all kinds of disorders and, certainly, to soothe us when we’re stressed. Kids with attention-deficit disorder have been shown to concentrate better if Mozart is playing in their classroom. Epileptics are less likely to have seizures if they’ve been listening to Mozart (an element I worked into the plot of MOZART’S LAST ARIA.)

I found the last six symphonies were the most relaxing, and the piano sonatas. I think that’s because there’s an even greater clarity in these pieces than in some of Mozart’s other work. It’s also in these pieces that he hits the sonic frequencies particular to him which appear to be behind the curative effect of his music – frequencies scientists have found NOT to occur in other great composers like Beethoven or Brahms. (Listen to those other guys and it’ll be good for you, but it won’t really calm you and it certainly doesn’t have the same effect on A.D.D. or epileptics.)

At the worst time of the intifada, in 2003, I took a vacation with my wife in Austria and the Czech Republic. I wanted to experience some calm in the mountains, see some beautiful cities, and hear lovely music. I found all those things, but I also stumbled across something that made me come to life creatively.

The trip became an impromptu Mozart tour – but not necessarily the Mozart you might expect. We happened to pass through the tiny village in the mountains near Salzburg where Mozart’s sister lived as the wife of a boring local functionary (and where by chance his mother had been born). I started to think about this sister, who was called Nannerl (German for “Little Nanna.” Her full name was Maria Anna.) She had been almost as talented as Wolfgang, but she was cooped up in the mountains while her brother became famous in Vienna.

As a writer of crime fiction, of course, I also started to think about her response to his death.

Later, I was having dinner with Maestro Zubin Mehta, formerly the musical director of the New York Philharmonic and now holder of many top positions in the world of classical music. I asked him which of all the great composers he valued most highly. “I’d find it hard to live without Mozart,” he said.

That started me thinking about those people who had lived with Mozart. After his death at only 35, what had it been like to live without him. To have known and lost one of the greatest geniuses in the history of the world.

Over the course of many research trips to Vienna, I came up with the idea of posing Maestro Mehta’s question through Mozart’s sister. A musical prodigy who’s forgotten to history except as a footnote in stories about her famous brother, she knew him better than anyone. What might’ve been her response to losing him?

I hope that MOZART’S LAST ARIA comes close to the actual emotional experience Nannerl would’ve had. Based on real historical research it also posits some new ideas about who might’ve been behind the Maestro’s murder….

In the third of my podcasts I describe the story behind my historical crime novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA. I tell how I became interested in Nannerl Mozart, the great composer’s sister, while traveling in the mountains of Austria; how I developed the idea for my novel with the help of great musicians; how I researched the book; and how I used the form of one of Mozart’s great piano sonatas to structure my novel.

Download the Podcast: (Download the MP3)
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In the case of such writers, some of those 25 million may have degenerative diseases and others may be plain stupid, but in all likelihood about 24 million of them will remember a writer whose book they read, let’s say, two years ago.

Nonetheless the expectation remains that a book a year will be forthcoming. So do all crime writers have one good idea a year? Or do ideas take longer to gestate? And if they do, where does that leave the writer who needs to get words on paper right now.

In the case of my latest novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA (out now in the UK, but not until November in the US), it was eight years between the initial idea and publication. A most un-crime-fiction-like timescale.

It began with a trip I took with my wife into the Salzkammergut, to find peace among the mountains and lakes at a time when we were living through the Palestinian intifada in Jerusalem. There we stumbled across the remote house where Mozart’s sister Nannerl had lived and a fascination with her was born.

It was nurtured through future visits to Vienna, to Prague (where Mozart’s operas are still performed in the Estates Theater, scene of his “Don Giovanni” premier), dinners with Maestro Zubin Mehta at which we discussed our mutual admiration for the great composer (though it shan’t surprise you to learn that his understanding of the music is on a somewhat, ahem, more elevated level than mine…)

All this was before I began to scribble notes and plot diagrams and to read every letter Mozart wrote and to walk Vienna searching out the places where I wanted to set scenes and to listen, listen, listen to all his music. Oh, and to learn to play the piano so I could play Mozart, but the less said about that the better, because sooner or later someone’s going to want to hear me play and I oughtn’t to inflict that on anyone.

Meanwhile, I wrote four of my crime novels set in present-day Palestine (and Brooklyn’s Little Palestine.) They came quicker. Perhaps because after the first book, THE COLLABORATOR OF BETHLEHEM, I had a set of characters to whom I could return. The events I described were often based on stories I had covered as a journalist, so there were readymade anchors for the plot—things which had actually happened, which I had heard described or even seen for myself.

The most important element, though, of putting yourself in a position to write a book a year is a matter of managing your head. Last night I was chatting with a fabulous author, Evan Fallenberg, who noted that the idea for the great novel he just published came to him when he was lying bed after waking up. My ideas for the novel I’m about to begin working on came while I was meditating and developed on my regular walks home from the gym. In other words, when I wasn’t forcing myself to think anything through.

I’ve come to believe that remaining creatively open, focusing on relaxation and not overstimulation, allows the brain to unleash itself. If our fingers could keep up, we could type a dozen novels a year—if only we’d set our brains free.

In my historical thriller, the composer’s sister Nannerl comes to Vienna to investigate her suspicion that Wolfgang was poisoned. One of the men who helps her is Baron Gottfried van Swieten, an important patron of her brother. Swieten was Imperial Librarian, and you can see the majesty and learning of that time arrayed on the shelves of the Prunksaal, the great library attached to the Hofburg, the Emperors’ palace in central Vienna.

The library is open to the public, but you’ll rarely find more than five or six other visitors there at one time – most people are shuffling with the crowds through the Emperor’s rooms down the way. It’s a gem hidden in rather plain site.

The house where Mozart died was destroyed some time ago (though you can visit a museum in the house where he wrote The Marriage of Figaro nearby). There’s a department store there now, on Rauhenstein Lane. But if you stand with your back to the spot, you can look to your left, your right, and in front of you, and you’ll see just what Wolfgang would’ve seen – except there’ll be less horse manure on the streets. Much of central Vienna remains just as it was in Mozart’s time.

Despite its destruction, I was able to describe the interior of Mozart’s home quite fully, however. There have been a number of academic theses written about the furniture and layout of the apartment. Yes, really. (Some years ago, the startling discovery was made that not only did he have two windows on the front of his studio, but he also had another one on the side. You get a Ph.d. for this stuff, you know. But anyway I’m very grateful to those dedicated Mozartians.)

You can look at a photo tour of other Mozart sites and locations from MOZART’S LAST ARIA in Vienna on my website.

When I first visited Vienna, I took a train north to Prague, where I saw a production of Don Giovanni, Mozart’s great opera, in the Estates Theater. It was here in 1785 that the “opera of operas” was premiered. Mozart reputedly wrote the overture at his friends’ house Villa Bertramka on the day of the first performance. You can visit Bertramka, not far from the city center. During the summer, the Estates Theater rotates three of Mozart’s great operas, Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutti, and The Marriage of Figaro. The performances are wonderful, and it’s astonishing to see opera in an unchanged, historic theater of such intimacy, where Mozart actually performed and where the concert scenes of the movie Amadeus were filmed.

Naturally Mozart’s birthplace, Salzburg, is filled with places to visit for his fans. But for me the most significant place was an hour’s drive up into the Salzkammergut mountains. There I came across St. Gilgen, the tiny village where Mozart’s mother was born. It also happens to be the place his sister Nannerl was packed off to be married to a boring local functionary. I imagined how it must have been for her after her years as a child piano prodigy, playing in the great palaces of Europe with her brother. It was in this village that I had the idea of transplanting her to the Imperial capital to probe her brother’s death.

From the little house where she lived, I looked out across the lake. As I watched the sun on the glimmering surface of the water, the first intimations of how I would write my novel came to me. I hope you’ll visit the village and see if Nannerl speaks to you too.

Anyhow, that’s enough digression, even for a blog post. So back to the point: All my previous video clips – which can be viewed on my website – have necessitated no more than a jaunt to Nablus, Gaza or Bethlehem, where I’ve been filmed chatting about the latest adventures of my Palestinian sleuth Omar Yussef. This time, I have to recreate the world of Vienna, 1791, for my historical mystery.

For the novel, creating the atmosphere, the details and the locations of Vienna during Mozart’s time brought me to amass a few shelf-loads of research, to learn piano so I could play some Mozart, and to travel in Austria and Central Europe.

The video places a few more demands. This week I’ve been getting into costume.

I found a theatrical costume shop on a tiny alley in the oldest part of West Jerusalem just off Jaffa Road. Run by a delightful, bustling French lady named Francoise Coriat, the compact store is packed up and down (hanging from the ceiling too) with pirate suits, musketeer costumes, and every other period-wear you’d ever need. Mostly Francoise hires them out to theaters.

She kitted me out with two big flouncy dresses for the two female musicians who’ll feature in the video and three frock-coat suits for the men. And a Little Mozart costume for my three year old son.

Then it was time to figure out exactly how to film it. My videographer pal David Blumenfeld produces new equipment each year when it’s time for me to get a video done. This time he has a little slide to mount on top of his tripod; put the camera (these things are so small these days) on it and you can make a dolly shot that looks positively cinematic. His lighting is increasingly creative too. So I was sure it’d look great.

I worked up a script last week, aiming to make the video seem more like a movie trailer than the more documentary/journalistic style of most of my previous promos. Why? Well, first because MOZART’S LAST ARIA isn’t based on a topic you’re used to seeing featured in the news – whereas Palestinians, unfortunately for them, are very much in the news. Morever, it seems to me people are used to reading novels which are like movies – almost entirely visual, very little of the internal narrative of novels written a century ago – so perhaps book promotional videos ought to be that way too. This is how we think of stories these days.

True, said my friend Matthew Kalman, a journalist based here in Jerusalem who’s also a filmmaker. But beware, he said, that you don’t expect amateur actors to…act.

A good point, and one David and I bore in mind as we figured out just what we’d need to shoot. We didn’t want to put too much pressure on the musicians who’d be in the video by asking them to express emotion and to have it pass across their faces in the restrained manner of film acting.

The main thing, of course, is that I got to dress up in silk stockings and wear a wig. Just so I could look like Mozart, you understand.

Well, more on all this next week when you’ll hear how the actual shooting went.

Like any other city, Vienna abounds with urban myths. Separate truth from fiction with these Vienna mythbusters.

Vienna Urban Myth #1: The great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was buried in a pauper’s grave.

FALSE
Vienna Mythbusters and scholars will be quick to tell you Mozart indeed had money troubles when he died in 1791 at only 35. But his style of burial wasn’t determined by his lack of wealth – which seems to have been due only to a short-term credit crunch rather than real poverty.

We can blame this erroneous Vienna urban legend on Emperor Joseph II. After all, it’s his fault we don’t know exactly where the great Maestro was buried. Inspired by the New Enlightenment, Joseph wanted to be rid of traditions he associated with the backwardness of the Catholic Church, so he targeted funeral rites.

One of the Emperor’s rules was that members of Vienna’s society (except those with a high social status) were buried in reusable coffins. The end of these caskets had swinging doors and the body was tipped through them into graves. The graves weren’t mass graves, as is often written. Mozart had his own grave, but every 10 years, the Emperor decreed, all the graves would be plowed over so that the land could be reused for new graves.

I visited St. Marx’s Cemetery, a chilling spot even for the bravest Vienna mythbusters, when I was researching my novel Mozart’s Last Aria, and it’s about a mile southeast of the center of town along the Rennweg. A small monument to Mozart stands in an area of undulating grass. It’s actually a disturbing site because the grass covers the mixed-up bones of thousands of Viennese, whose graves were plowed over again and again until after Joseph’s death, when regular burials resumed.

Read the rest of the article on AOL News.

How long did it take you to get published?

I started out in journalism, so I had a sense of accomplishment right off, publishing my travel pieces in newspapers and magazines all over the place. Books are a different animal, but again I went with travel first and had some good early success with walking, hiking, and cycling guides. I wrote eight novels, though, before I got my first one, Time of the Wolf, published.

With the current “Viennese Mystery” series, things were easier. I had a bit of an author platform with several well-received books about Vienna and an agent who is most savvy. First query landed us the book deal.

Would you recommend any books on writing?

Tried and trusted here: you can look a lot further and do a lot worse than E.M Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. Another classic is Percy Lubbock’s The Craft of Fiction. These will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I just love the erudite discussions in both.

What’s a typical writing day?

I get to work about nine in the morning after I drop my son off at school. I try to devote the first hours of the writing day to the current fiction project–currently the fourth book in the Viennese Mystery series. Then some exercise–tennis, if I am lucky–and lunch, followed by more mundane freelance stuff in the afternoon that also helps to pay the bills.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?

Each of the books in the Viennese Mystery series features a famous historical figure of Vienna 1900. Requiem in Vienna focuses on musical Vienna: the composer Gustav Mahler is the target of an assassin and my protagonist, the lawyer and private inquiries man, Karl Werthen, is hired to protect him. The books are a blend of historical whodunit and literary thriller with more than a dash of historical/cultural/food lore thrown in.

Here’s what a Kirkus Reviews critic had to say of the current series installment: “Sophisticated entertainment of a very high caliber.”

How much research is involved in each of your books?

There are decades of research in the books. Explanation: I started researching Vienna 1900 long ago for my book, Hitler in Vienna. Since then I have continued to read heavily in the period, but for each book I still need to bone up on the historical folks I am featuring. Some writer once said that research was sort of like writing without the creative sweat. I enjoy the research; I probably commit about three months to each before I even begin the plotting. And thank whomever for the Internet–I can even get full editions of Viennese papers of the time online.

Where’d you get the idea for your main character?

Karl Werthen is a successful lawyer and sometimes inquiry agent, an assimilated Jew, and a distinct Viennophile. And I haven’t got a clue to where he comes from, other than a shared love for Vienna. He just appeared full-formed on the first page of The Empty Mirror, the initial in the series. A minor character, he elbowed his way to the forefront by the end of the first draft; the series concept actually had the real-life father of criminology, Hanns Gross, as the protagonist. A crusty old curmudgeon, Gross tugs Werthen away from his safe wills and trusts gig back into criminal law in that first one, to prove the artist Gustav Klimt innocent of murdering his model. But it just worked out so much better to use Werthen as my lead and Gross, the pompous pro, as the sometimes sidekick.

What’s your experience with being translated?

Somewhat odd. For example, my Hitler in Vienna was first published in Germany. I originally queried publishers there in German, and it was bought sight unseen (Hitler, at the time, was a hot topic). When they received my doorstopper of a manuscript in English and realized it needed to be translated, they were none too pleased. But they sucked it up and published anyway.

Then when trying to sell the English-language rights, I had a hell of a time convincing editors in England and the U.S. that no, they would not have to have the book translated. I already had the English original of the manuscript.

What books have influenced you?

As a young man I loved the lyricism of Steinbeck. Lee from East of Eden is still one of my favorite fictional characters. And of course there was Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Then during the almost twenty years I lived in Vienna, I became an avid reader of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British authors. Blame it on the British Council. A wonderful resource in its day with massive armchairs around a humming ceramic stove. Thomas Hardy became my literary hero; I open one of his novels and begin reading his scene-setting on some desolate heath in the south of England, and I get actual chills. The language just works for me. And Conrad. Don’t even get me started on Conrad–and the bugger wrote in a second language! A guilty pleasure also became the works of J.B. Priestley, especially his Good Companions.

Did these books influence my writing? Who knows, but they surely have made my life fuller. Le Carre, of course, pushed me in new ways with dialogue and plot, as did the early fiction works of Paul Theroux (Saint Jack, Picture Palace). I wish I could make my dialogue sparkle and crack they way those guys do. But this catalogue could go on for some time. Basta.

Thanks, Syd. Fascinating insights.

Thanks for the opportunity to chat, Matt.

The Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family is a beautiful sandstone building on the corner where the Via Dolorosa turns briefly onto the main alley of the Muslim Quarter’s souq. Buzz at the main gate, climb up two flights of enclosed steps, and you’re in a palm-shaded garden fronting a broad, four-story façade. Nearly 150 years old, it was built for Catholic pilgrims and for much of the second half of the last century was an insanitary hospital. Now returned to its original Austrian owners, it’s a hotel for church groups visiting the historic sites of Jerusalem.

From its roof, there’s a panoramic view of the Old City. It’s for this that I labored up the front steps with my friend, videographer David Blumenfeld, and his numerous camera bags, lights and reflector shields, last month. We’d already filmed a promo video for my next novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN in my favorite seedy Old City café, where I shone with sweat, swallowed cardamom-flavored coffee and sucked on a foul nargila, until I looked sufficiently like an inveterate marijuana-user coming down. Now it was time for a second video.

I approached the front desk of the Hospice in the large marble entrance hall. A blonde man in his twenties greeted me: “Grüss Gott.” I’m a lover of things Austrian, so I had a good feeling already.

“Grüss Gott. We’re making a short video for my website. Can we film on the roof?”

“It’s not allowed, unless you have permission.” Not unfriendly. Just stating the rules.

But I’ve lived in the Middle East long enough to know that there ARE no rules. “Don’t worry. It’s really nothing. It’s just for my website. To tell people about my book.”

“What is the book?”

The truth: It’s about a Palestinian teacher who goes to visit his son in New York and discovers a headless body in his son’s bed. No, I’d better not tell him that. It doesn’t sound like something he’d want a pilgrim hostel associated with. How about this? “It’s about Palestinians and how they live their lives.”

A bit more of this and the Austrian was thinking hard. “Ok, but just for ten minutes.”

“Of course, thank you. That’s very kind of you. Ten minutes, of course.” In the Middle East, one of the things that really gets me down is that putting one over on someone else isn’t seen as a bad thing to do. If you can get away with it, then good for you. Naturally when I get the opportunity to do this, I have a feeling of payback for all the times I’ve been deliberately misled by the locals. With that warm sensation, I ascended in the Hospice’s rickety elevator.

Up on the roof, the afternoon sunshine was too bright to film. It was so harsh I’d have been squinting into the camera like Clint Eastwood. So David and I descended to the Hospice’s garden café. For a mere 100 shekels ($30) we had a slice each of strudel (an uncommon dish in Jerusalem, where even Israelis who arrived as immigrants from Austria tend to eat Middle Eastern style), some soda and coffee.

Suitably refreshed we returned to the roof and soldiered on, despite the insanely bright sunshine.

Despite the occasional loud Israeli on a cellphone and the Korean tourists who stopped taking photos of the Dome of the Rock so they could photograph me, I managed to read most of the first chapter of THE FOURTH ASSASSIN without a pause.

Then, just before I’d finished, from the corner of my eye I spy the blonde fellow from reception striding toward me.

“Sir, you have to stop now. This has been more than 10 minutes,” he said.

“We’ve only been working a few minutes. We were down in the café most of the time. We had strudel.”

He twisted his face as though his finger had just gone through the toilet paper. “And I should believe you?”

“Yes, why would I lie? Go and ask the people in the coffee shop.”

I feel for this Austrian. After all, Israelis and Palestinians are able to lie with absolutely no compunction. It’s one of the first things you learn when you live here a while. I could see that this poor fellow had been at the front desk of the Hospice for a sufficient time to train him to recognize a lie, but not long enough to give him the graceful Arab ability to maneuver around someone else’s untruths without humiliating them. This fellow had only two options: let me get away with it, or kick me out.

“So five more minutes and then you’re out,” he said.

Here’s where my own cultural training came in. The over-emotional Welshman in me wanted to say: Listen, butty, I paid 100 shekels for some stiff strudel in your café, so you can bloody well calm down. In any case what do you think I’m filming up here? It’s just my face, some domed buildings in the background, and a lot of sunshine. What’re you protecting? It’s not a military installation. I’m buggered if I’m going to be hurried by you.

But I also know that the Middle Eastern way is to move from bald-faced lieing to apparent humility and submission, smug in the knowledge that you’ve got what you want. So I let him think he was having his way.

Twenty minutes later, when David and I passed the reception desk on our way out, I stopped to wave my thanks to the Austrian. Never leave anyone with a nasty taste in their mouth. Arabs taught me that. The kisses on the cheeks they bestow after a dispute really do defuse all the tension.

He ignored me. A Palestinian would never have done that.

Here’s the video David and I made:

But then we know that Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego Bruno has balls of steel–because we see them being wrenched about by a dust-buster in such a way that flesh and blood genitalia wouldn’t be able to handle.

Baron Cohen’s movie is out this week in the Middle East. The segment shot in Jerusalem got a big laugh at the local theater where I saw the film last night. Baron Cohen minces through an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood dressed as a sexy Hassid (probably a first), and engages in a debate with a former Palestinian government minister and an ex-Mossad official in which he confuses Hamas and hummus. “I mean, why is Hamas so dangerous? It’s just beans, right?”

It wasn’t one of the Middle Eastern segments that scored highest with the Israeli audience, however. When Bruno is running down a list of Hollywood stars he wants in his putative talkshow, he’s told that “Stevie Wunderbar” and “Bradolph Pittler” have turned him down.

Refusing to give up, he points hopefully at a picture of Mel Gibson and asks: “Der Fuehrer?” Proving that Gibson’s drunken antisemitic rant to a traffic cop is more famous than Braveheart, that one got a round of applause in the theater.