The chatter during intermission at Carnegie Hall was abruptly hushed by a gun shot. Jan Tusar, the violin virtuoso who minutes before had been nervously performing, was now quite calm and quite dead

The broken vase

The chatter during intermission at Carnegie Hall was abruptly hushed by a gun shot. Jan Tusar, the violin virtuoso who minutes before had been nervously performing, was now quite calm and quite dead by his own hand. Backstage, amid the barking police, glittering socialites, and devious companions of the deceased, was shrewd private investigator Tecumseh Fox. Fox, from the start, smelled a rat. The two eyewitnesses saw far too much. A second suicide noter vanished. The victim's prize Stradivarius was encased in mystery. And cryptic messages arrived from - of all people - the Nazis! Then Fox's strange case burst at the seams when a broken Ming vase became the missing piece to a bloody puzzle of deception, passion and murder.

The broken vase