What happens when you find a book in a landmark New York bookstore by a reclusive author? Nothing until you discover that it was a publisher's review copy that never came to print. And then you discover that no one's ever heard of it and for all intents and purposes it has simply disappeared.

This is the true story of a fascinating and haunting chain of events that links the author with an improbable correspondent, a renown international biographer, the BBC, and either a surprising revelation or a well-imagined answer to the title he found on that bookstore table that started it all.