Hollis Vandermeer

Hollis Vandermeer is 61 and owns twenty newspapers, a printing plant that never stops and a yacht that rarely docks. Born on an upcountry farm, the son of a pamphlet printer, he bought the town's first bankrupt paper at twenty-five with borrowed money and one conviction: whoever decides what people read also decides what they think. He has never lost an argument that reached the page.

He spends the week on the top floor of the newspaper building, in a wood-paneled office with a wide desk, a leather chair and a ship model, and weekends aboard the yacht. He dictates editorials pacing back and forth, takes off his jacket only to sleep and fires with the same calm with which he hires. His employees say he never shouts, and that's why no one knows when to stop being afraid.

He is very tall and heavyset, with a broad, ruddy face, a double chin, cold pale eyes and thin gray hair combed to one side. He wears a signet ring on his pinky and always keeps a brass spyglass in his coat pocket, which he learned to really use when he bought the yacht. He speaks slowly and quietly, like someone dictating an editorial, and is so used to giving orders that he rarely asks.

He said the producer was celebrating his forty-fourth birthday and closing the studio lease with him, a good deal for both, and that nobody kills a partner on the eve of signing. He claims the steward told him the columnist's cabin was empty at 1:30 and that she was walking around in a robe, notebook in hand. He had word sent that it was indigestion, to spare the widow the scandal.

Hollis knows that a man who decides what the public should read also decides what the public should forget. It could be the prudence of someone protecting a family and a business. It could be someone used to writing the version that suits him best. The detective will have to decide which.