Fadeout — Joseph Hansen

It was a situation insurance companies call "specific peril." Singer Fox Olson's white convertible had been found smashed in an arroyo. It looked as if, on a night of storm, he had missed a narrow wooden bridge and had plunged to his death. Then where was the body?

Olson's wife, daughter, and son-in-law insisted it would be found when the storm ended. But insurance claims investigator Dave Brandstetter doubted it. He thought Olson had chosen to disappear.

Doggedly, Dave pursued leads, and found: a relationship between Olson's wife and his manager too warm to call friendship, the sudden return after twenty-odd years of a man who had been Olson's closest boyhood friend, and more than one "fan" who had reason to resent Olson's hard-won success.