(sky above original Pinkum Press)

So... what happened to Harry Hardiner? Good fucking question.

Music Row Mafia

    Some people assume that Hardiner's comment to Maxence Lawrence that he was working on a book about "the Music Row Mafia" was meant to refer to a literal organized crime syndicate in Nashville, and they think that he might have uncovered some information that earned him a swift whacking. This theory seems to have the most traction among Hardiner devotees, although I'm not sure I could believe that Hardiner and Lawrence were on such close speaking terms after being slighted over Rise. Maxence Lawrence was never the most trustworthy person, as far as I can see, and everything about this theory (including the questionable existence of any Music Row Mafia) relies on his word. 

Oak Ridge

    Visitor logs to the secure facility at Oak Ridge prove that Harry Hardiner was signed in and escorted around. Although details have never been publicly verified, close sources have said that Hardiner was writing about nuclear power and had asked to be better-educated in the subject. There are no surviving documents relating to nuclear science in the papers found at Hardiner's Maghreb estate. Some conspiracy theorists have suggested that Hardiner was abducted by the military and these papers destroyed to prevent sensitive materials from being leaked. Obviously, no government agency responds to this line of questioning.

Secret Debt

    Hardiner did not seem to have been in financial straits when he disappeared, but in more recent years, certain documents have come to light which suggest he had borrowed extensively from Maxence Lawrence to cover the costs of his property's upkeep and the publication of the last few Rosewire books. There is speculation that increased pressures on Hardiner to repay these loans may have resulted in some sort of adverse action against him which may have gotten out of hand—or that the author fled before that kind of reprisal could come his way. To me, this doesn't explain the flamboyance of his disappearance (the noose, the lights, the MESHARE), but it certainly points up the uneasy relationship he kept with Maxence Lawrence throughout the 90s. 

Lovers' Feud

    Which brings us most directly to the only person ever officially investigated as a subject in Hardiner's disappearance, Lawrence himself. The editor and mystery writer of course denied any and all involvement up until his own disappearance (and death) in 2008—to me, it brings to mind the whole Natalie Wood scandal, and like that drowning, I am not quite certain I can have an opinion about what may have happened. There is little doubt that there were very strained interactions between the two writers over the course of the decade, and very high passions in play behind closed doors. Jazra Jaban, in her film Max Larry, Haunted Fairy suggests that the assault in Lights Low was taken from an episode in real life, which cemented the dooms of both authors. In the movie, a scarred Maxence hires a hitman who fails to kill Harry, but who drives the Rosewire author into hiding, plotting his revenge. This revenge entails driving Lawrence crazy, feeding an obsession to know the truth about that night, which ends in Lawrence's death in that refrigerator in rural West Alabama. Of course, the movie places the refrigerator in the woods at Hardiner Hollow...

Family

    Harry Hardiner apparently went out of his way to obscure his past, perhaps even adopting a fake name, and almost certainly manufacturing wholecloth the stories of his childhood in nonexistant Bookbright. However, some Harry Hunters believe that the last book in the Rosewire series would reveal Hardiner's true past—and that it may have cast a poor light on his true family, who either "called him home" to prevent the publication of this last book or, more in line with the way Hardiner talked about "filial piety" in his books, who killed him to silence their ungracious son. Although it's no longer considered a serious possibility, this theory is the basis of Rupert Smythe-Pryce's book Harry Hunters and has endured in the public mind as perhaps the "Hardinest" theory around.

Fraud

    Of course, there is the very distinct possibility that the whole disappearance was staged by Hardiner himself in connection with any of these other theories, or perhaps for publicity, or perhaps in a dramatic suicidal burst. Even if this is the case, dedicated Harry Hunters still look for clues that would explain the strange events of that night. One off-shoot of this theory: Harry Hunter did NOT leave Rosewire unfinished—after a lifetime of experimenting with form, his last Rosewire "book" WAS the disappearance. ...I can't say that seems totally out of line with everything that came before, but, like many Hardiner fans, I tend to believe this is a cop-out.

The Fringe

And then we get into the just plain old weird, wacky, and malicious. 

    Ascension – Harry Hardiner "rose" (get it? Rise?) out of The Maghreb and into some higher plane of existence, explaining the lights—the noose on the Hanging Cedar slipped through from the other universe and changed places with the author.

    Neo Nazi Numerology – First proposed by youtube commenter hesteryouth, Harry Hardiner chose his own name (more specifically his first initials) to coincide with the Neo Nazi rallying cry "Heil Hitler", or HH, or 88. Hesteryouth suggests that Hardiner was assassinated in a creative Mossad operation; oddly enough, in the same breath, s/he asserts that Hardiner was himself a Mossad agent. Despite this jumble, the "Harry the Nazi" theory seems to have taken root in a certain subset of Harry Hunting. I do not see ANYTHING in Hardiner's work to suggest he had any connection with the Aryan Brotherhood or any other hate groups, and, in fact, his own ethnicity is very much in question. What's more, Hardiner did seem to have an obsession with the number 8: but this obsession seemed to have been fed by the Far East as opposed to Berlin. 

    The Yi Jing – There is, actually, an incredibly convoluted theory that I will not go wholly into here involving the Yi Jing, the true name of YHWH, and the sequence of chapters in Green Stone Story strongly featuring evidence of Hardiner's obsession with the number 8, numerology, and gematria. Again, there is the general thought of "Hardiner unveiled something dangerous", which is probably more telling than any of the arcane details of this theory.

    The Safe – The safe that was dredged up from the silty bottom of the deep Treasure Pond in March 2000 was never publicly opened: it was, in fact, the first duty of the Trust Maghreb to seize the safe and protect its contents from public scrutiny. Law enforcement officials tried to reclaim the safe as evidence in the short-lived investigation, but legal barriers were too high. Some Harry Hunters point out that the safe was large enough to contain dismembered remains, and that possibly Harry Hardiner's body was found on the property after all. The Trust Maghreb put out a press release "cataloguing" the supposed contents of the safe—some bearer bonds, a few "undiscovered manuscripts" which have yet to be described or released, a collection of personal photographs, a personal computer, and some personal belongings including a watch and an antique rifle. We have not seen these contents. Like some online commenters have said before me, maybe it's easier here to just "trust Maghreb". 

Where do you stand?

    Me? Oh, you want to know what I think happened to Harry Hardiner? I could not begin to tell you. And, truth be told, I wouldn't be terribly upset if we never learn. The mystery has given me a lot of opportunity to look very closely at Hardiner's work both as artistic creations and as possible statements about this world, and that investigation has changed the way I think of just about everything. The beauty of Harry Hardiner's disappearance is that it feels so solvable, and yet it's never been remotely solved. It's 2016, and a man with an invented past achieved great tasks in a short time and just evaporated into thin air. We know everything about everyone now; but Harry Hardiner is still one big question mark from top to bottom. 

But really, what do you think happened?

    Okay, you're going to force me into this? Well, I'll admit I think he's probably dead. Suicide doesn't seem out of character for the man, although it makes me very sad to say that, and very angry with him if he did it. I mean, come on, Harry. You want to kill yourself? Then just keep living—time will take care of that nicely for you. I also think he had put too much work in to just leave Rosewire unfinished. I believe he was working on his last book, and something happened. I don't know what. I don't presume to guess. But I think he wound up dead, and the people around him covered it up. Rex Patch vociferously disagrees with me—he's one of the very loud camp that still thinks, even the better part of two decades later, that Hardiner is in hiding somewhere, perhaps on the beaches of Zihuatanejo or in a cabin in the foothills of Nepal, hoarding his last book until he feels it's time to release it. 

    I think that's a rather pie-in-the-sky fantasy myself, but it's given a lot of Harry Hunters gas for their tanks, fueling a search that has truly crawled the earth after the author and that even now, in its own diminished way, maintains a stranglehold over some people's obsessions. I personally choose to read the Rosewire books (and the rest of Hardiner's work) for the pleasure of reading them, and choose to "Harry Hunt" within their pages not in hopes of finding the author to shake his hand or slap his face, but in order to better understand the hand that put them down. We may never know where Harry Hardiner was born, or to what family—but it's my fervent belief that we cannot help but write what we know, and that trying to find Harry's face behind his pages might help me grow as a writer and as a human being.