The Broken Vase
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The Broken Vase is a Tecumseh Fox mystery novel by Rex Stout, first published by Farrar and Rhinehart in 1941, and later in paperback by Pyramid Books.
For readers more used to Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, it's something of a shock to find a detective that is agile although by no means intrusive, lives in Brewster outside New York City (instead of mid-town Manhattan as Wolfe does), and has a positive relationship with law enforcement (despite nearly running down a police officer in a scene in this novel).
The novel begins with backstage performance jitters just before a musical performance at Carnegie Hall in New York to be given by a striking young violinist and his on-again-off-again girlfriend piano accompanist, whose father has died a few months earlier in a fall from the window on the 20th floor of a Manhattan office building. Tecumseh Fox is by no means a follower of classical music, but has been convinced by a friend to help contribute to buying a Stradivarius violin for the young performer.
After witnessing with his friend backstage histrionics only slightly more extreme than some in real life, Fox and his friend take their seats in the audience, and the concert begins. But the concert does not go well, and it seems not to be the fault of either the violinist or the pianist but the magnificent violin itself. The concert limps to intermission, and the audience is so disgusted that many go home. Fox and his friend rush backstage, only to find that the young violinist has just shot himself to death.
Of the bare event of suicide no doubt is possible, but Fox and others suspect that dire events drove the man to suicide, amounting to murder.
The book takes place amid the backdrop of the Manhattan upper crust and the trappings of great wealth, especially extremely valuable art objects, and the hangers on to that society, artists, their promoters, and the deadly romantic intrigues of that set.
The first few pages of the book aspire to great fiction, not merely a detective mystery: indeed the criminal element only arises later. Before the intermission scene, it might just be any young successful artist encouraged by some wealthy patrons, abused by others, or indeed allowing himself to be dragged into such intrigues himself even though his imminent success would make all that unnecessary.
Although the culprit, as in any murder mystery, is not revealed until the last minute, the reader may well guess correctly, but the real problem is where the proof is going to come from, for what manner of proof in the ordinary sense could possibly show that a suicide witnessed by more than one reliable witness is really an act of murder?
This neglected, out of print, book is perhaps the best of Stout's murder mysteries. Like the slightly later Nero Wolfe story Not Quite Dead Enough, the impending war affects attitudes of the characters greatly even though this is not a spy novel, although swastikas do play a role.
Another element rarely found in Rex Stout stories is drawings (swastikas and other messages).
Finally, the vase mentioned in the book's title is a Ming vase and several very specific types of Chinese vases are mentioned, along with non-trivial details of violin technique.
