Tecumseh Fox thinks that he is seeing double when financier Ridley Thorpe is shot twice, two gorgeous suspects appear, two very good motives are revealed, and two murder weapons surface.

Someone has been doctoring the gourmet appetizers at family-run Tingley’s Titbits. And when old man Tingley meets a sudden end, suspicion falls on a gorgeous young detective whose fingerprints are on the knife. Moved by feminine beauty and professional courtesy, Tecumseh Fox takes the case, only to find he’s got more on his plate than he bargained for. Suddenly he has enough suspects to fill a fair-sized cocktail party. On the menu are corporate pirates, crackpot economics, a license plate that doesn’t exist, and a phone conversation with a dead man. Now it’s up to Fox to provide the missing ingredient in this smorgasbord of a cold-blooded killer.

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.