About The Vanishing Violinist:
In the small town of Oliver, Indiana, widowed violist Joan Spencer and "her cop," as her son Andrew calls Detective Lieutenant Fred Lundquist, are finally ready to tie the knot when her daughter, Rebecca, surprises her with the announcement that she's going to marry Bruce Graham, a virtuoso violinist.
Rebecca and Bruce live in New York City, but he's about to come to Indiana for the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, not far from Oliver. Joan, Fred, and Andrew meet Bruce and some of the other competitors and their families and host families at a picnic. The stakes are high, and tensions abound. Uwe Frech, a German violinist, dives for a Frisbie and breaks his hand. A doctor's son, Bruce proves resourceful in the emergency, but Uwe's out of the running.
Having missed the first round of the competition because of her managerial responsibilities in the Oliver Civic Symphony, Joan attends the semi-finals, in which Bruce, Nathan Lloyd, of Louisville, and Camila Pereira, of Rio de Janeiro, stand out. But Camila's Stradivarius mysteriously disappears just before her turn to compete, and the Indianapolis police suspect Bruce of the theft. Then Camila herself vanishes, and the pressure on Bruce increases. With Fred working a fatal hit-and-run accident in Oliver, it's up to Joan to string together a theft, a disappearance, and a murder.