Sylvia
It was the toughest case a detective could handle: trace the past of a beautiful woman you've never met, with only a book of poems, two lines of handwriting, and a fake story to go on. And the assignment was all Alan Macklin's, private investigator and would-be teacher of ancient history.
 Mr. Summers, a wealthy businessman, wanted to find out the truth about the girl he planned to marry. And Macklin, despising both Summers for his cold objectivity and himself for taking the job for the money, set out on an elusive trail through the shadowy past of Sylvia West.
Beginning with an English professor whose life enveloped his wife and six children and all of literature, Macklin's path grew more and more sordid, yet strangely compelling, as he traveled to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, New York City, El Paso, and across the border into Mexico. It was a journey that touched on people whose personalities were a maze of the complexities and anxieties that sprang from the grim truths of their lives. And when asked about her, every one of these people replied "Yes... I remember Sylvia."
Still, as the dark secrets of her life began to unfold to Macklin, so did Sylvia's subtle beauty -- and the once-aloof investigator found himself faced with a roadblock he had not counted on.
Sylvia is a suspenseful, realistic drama that will absorb the reader in an unflinching, gripping revelation of the veiled past of that most unusual woman who was... SYLVIA.
from the dust jacket of the 1960 Doubleday first edition
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