This paper was written in response to the following question: what conditions are sufficient to guarantee that if a compact subset A of a topological linear space L^3 is not convex, then for every point x belonging to the complement of A relative to the convex hull of A there exists a line segment yz such that x belongs to yz and y belongs to A and z belongs to A? Restated in the terminology of this paper the question bay be given as follow: what conditions may be imposed upon a compact subset A of L^3 to insure that A is braced?