Rebecca calls home to share some exciting news and to ask a favor. She is engaged to marry Bruce Graham, a violinist destined, he hopes, to make his mark in a very competitive field. Bruce will be competing in the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and he needs a host family to stay with during the completion. Rebecca wants her mother to host Bruce. While Joan would love a chance to get to know her future son-in-law, her commitments in Oliver prevent her from agreeing to Rebecca’s request. However, she promises to attend as many of Bruce’s performances as she can.

Shortly after Bruce arrives bad things begin to happen. At a party at the home of a host family, a German violinist breaks his hand playing Frisbee, and must withdraw from the competition. Then a valuable violin belonging to a Brazilian contestant, Camilla Pereira, is stolen. Since Camilla would probably make the finals, this is a devastating blow, but she soldiers on with a borrowed instrument and makes the cut. When Camilla herself disappears and Bruce appears to be the police’s prime suspect, Joan enlists Fred Lundquist’s aid in solving the mystery, even though it is not really within his jurisdiction.

With The Vanishing Violinist Sara Hoskinson Frommer continues her fine series starring Joan Spencer. Previous titles include Murder & Sullivan, Buried in Quilts, and Murder in C Major. In this outing the author takes a giant step toward establishing the cozy as a legitimate sub genre. It does not appear easy to write a mystery of this type without resorting to many instances of fortuitous coincidence, and/or having the heroine (or hero) privy to much information that they really shouldn’t legitimately have.

Neither of these things happens in The Vanishing Violinist. Law enforcement plays a minor role and the heroine has a legitimate reason to be interested in the problem as well as some knowledge of musical competitions. She asks pertinent questions, and understands the answers.

By utilizing a classical music competition as a background, the author is able to interject within the story quite a wealth of knowledge about violins, how a completion works, and what differentiates a talented performer from an average one. As a musical illiterate, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. A successful contestant needs talent, dedication, creativity, and a little bit of luck to succeed in a very competitive field.

The characters, while not developed in great detail (the book is only 250 pages long), are fleshed out enough to come across as real people. They make mistakes, get nervous before they perform and have certain rituals they go through to prepare themselves in order to strive for the perfection they desire. They are not so different from their counterparts in the real world. The Vanishing Violinist is a fascinating look inside the arena of a professional violin competition.

--Andy Plonka