Blackmailer

A publisher from New York, Dick Sherman, is chasing a manuscript that could be the literary discovery of the century. It was left behind by a Nobel laureate who was a hunter, angler, brawler, and heavy drinker with a taste for Cuba, and who died from a self-inflicted gunshot. The killer on the trail is ruthless enough to do anything to keep the pages from surfacing.

The search pulls in a cast of suspects. There is a short, bald man with a squeaky voice and a sharp tongue whose cocktail parties are the talk of the town, and a party there ends with a beautiful woman dead. A Hollywood starlet, famous for her looks, is hiding secrets of her own, even when barely dressed.

The result is a fast-moving murder mystery built around a hunt for a valuable literary find, with a Manhattan publishing setting and a Hollywood undercurrent.