The Disappearance of Swenson's Secretary: A Harold Ober Mystery - Softcover

The real-life Harold Ober founded Harold Ober Associates, the oldest literary agency in the country, in 1929, and over the years the agency has built an impressive client list: Chinua Achebe, Sherwood Anderson, Judy Blume, Pearl S. Buck, James M. Cain, Agatha Christie, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Hawkes, Langston Hughes, Dean Koontz, Ira Levin, James Lord, Joseph Mitchell, J.D. Salinger, and Dylan Thomas, among many others. In J.D. West’s clever new mystery, The Disappearance of Swenson’s Secretary, we learn that Harold Ober is also an amateur detective, using the same skills he’s honed reading and editing manuscripts to solve baffling crimes. Along with his assistant, Max, he delves into the question of what happened to the secretary who accompanied her boss, H.A. Swenson, a film agent from Hollywood on his annual visit to editors and agents in New York City. The answer takes Ober and Max through a maze of plausible narratives, all against the backdrop of Gilded Age Manhattan.