Thirty years after the unsolved murder of a fiction writer, Dan Fargo, a single orphaned manuscript page turns up that could be evidence of another novel by the author. A private detective is hired by a wealthy fan to see if this novel exists. This search leads him to a wild variety of individuals in which there seems to be a difference of opinion of whether this book should be found. The search involves solving a number of mysteries and well as a death. It searches into the turbulent past of the dead author. This was a confusing book to read,

There were plenty of things to like in this one, especially as I tend to like missing manuscripts and some of the secrets went back to WWII. On the other hand, although Seeley's prose is good, the arrogance and condescending attitude of the main character annoyed me.

NetGalley/Booksgosocial
Mystery. Nov. 17, 2021. Print length: 429 pages.

The big perhaps by John Seeley.
Harry Webster Mystery.
Thirty years after the unsolved murder of hardboiled fiction writer Dan Fargo, a single orphaned manuscript page turns up that could be evidence of a previously unknown novel by the author. Private detective Harry Webster is hired by a wealthy fan to prove or disprove the existence of this long rumoured masterpiece, The Big Perhaps. It appears on the surface to be a tricky but safe assignment, unlike Webster’s previous cases, which have involved him in several brutal murders and a couple of relationships that didn’t end happily. In search of the Big Perhaps he crosses paths with a stoner crime fiction buff, a slacker bookseller, an attractive wiccan, Fargo’s old agent (a lady as hardboiled as any fictional p.i,) and Fargo’s best friend, a former Hollywood B movie director with a sentimental attachment to the poems of Walt Whitman. One of them will lie, one of them will die as Webster races to find the elusive manuscript, pitted against an invisible enemy who seems determined the Big Perhaps should stay lost for good and is prepared to kill to make sure it does. There are essentially three mysteries to be resolved – the fate of The Big Perhaps, the killing of Dan Fargo and the identity of a present day killer. The answers involve untangling the dead author’s turbulent past, which stretches ba.
ck through Hollywood in the McCarthy era to immediate post-Nazi Germany , where Fargo’s part in one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Second World War is revealed.
A slow but good read. Likeable story. 3*.