(Could this image from the laptop of Rupert Smythe-Pryce be a map of "Bookbright"?)
In 2004, British TV personality Rupert Smythe-Pryce released a book about Hardiner's disappearance and a group of people who gathered together to track the writer down. In this "unfiction novel", Rup and his girlfriend Petra round up 11 others to hunt for Bookbright—and they find it. In section headings like "Hunt and Peck" and "Election Day", Smythe-Pryce collects episodes from the group's time in Bookbright by theme rather than chronology, and over the course of these chapters, the group cobbles together their variety of theories on Harry Hardiner's whereabouts into a sort of "megatheory": Hardiner's family abducted him through magical means to prevent Harry Hardiner from showing Bookbright to the world. The book ends with a disclaimer that everything it presents actually happened, but the names had to be changed to protect the innocent—namely, the group that Rup and Petra got together.
In interviews after publication, Rupert Smythe-Pryce maintained his story: he had discovered Bookbright with his team, they had changed certain details to conceal its location and true identity, and yes, several of his group members had died before his eyes. Of course none of this has ever been verified—least of all the true identities of the other 11 in the original supposed group of Harry Hunters—but it sparked Smythe-Pryce's occultist career, including giving him the cachet to produce his show Stronger than Fiction.
In 2011, Rupert Smythe-Pryce, his girlfriend Petra, and his single Stronger than Fiction cameraman were found asphyxiated in a hotel room in downtown Nashville. Their deaths were put down to carbon monoxide poisoning—but rumors persist that they were in Tennessee to shoot an episode of his literary myth show in "the real Bookbright", and that someone (or something!) had to stop them. Again, it's a bit of a shame that such a tragic accident can become fodder for more conspiracy theories revolving around Hardiner—and yet, somehow entirely appropriate.
Still, since 2004, Hardiner fanatics who choose to investigate Hardiner's whereabouts or true identity through his works (either solely in the page, or out in the field) have been known as Harry Hunters.
I myself became a Harry Hunter soon after reading Rupert's excellent little page-turner. And yes, there were a few years there where I thought I was going to find Bookbright myself and track the author down. However, after meeting with the late Smythe-Pryce at a Society of Algiers conference (he was giving the Me Share Talk), I'm pretty firmly convinced that that brilliant little Brit found himself a whole lot of nothing—but a great deal of inspiration for a great novel that greatly inspired a great number of people to look more closely at a swiftly-forgotten author. So these days, instead of travelling the backroads of Tennessee, I stick to my home and scour the pages Hardiner left us for some better idea of who the man was.
Why do people still care? Why do I devote myself to this man I know I'll never meet? Is it what he said? Is it how he said it? Is it the mystery itself? Is it the frustration of having to go on without that perfect intended ending? I can really only take stabs at it—all I can truly say is that Harry Hunting quickly becomes a lifestyle, a philosophy, a higher calling. There seems to be something vast behind Hardiner's works, some truths that he tried to chisel away at, and to my mind, any efforts to peel back the layers can only bring us closer to understanding the universe around us.
Why bother to do that?
I don't know. Go find your own reasons!