Excerpt from The Search by Geoff Dyer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'But why me?'

'As I said, you've had a more interesting life than you let on. You could do it. You're not doing anything else. And you're restless.'

'How do you know I'm restless?'

'I meant you're totally content. Is that better?'

'Yes, it doesn't matter,' Walker said, smiling.

'I have no idea what it will involve,' Rachel continued. 'It's possible you will find him in a few days. It is equally possible that he has genuinely disappeared and has camouflaged his tracks— in which case finding him will be more difficult. Either way the important thing is that you find him before anyone else.'

'So you want me to find him and get him to sign and fingerprint a piece of paper. That's all?'

'Yes.'

'And what if he doesn't want to sign this new will or contract or whatever?'

'Then perhaps you mention that there are people who wish to see him dead and who would pay a lot to know his whereabouts. It won't come to that. Like I said, Alex has always been generous to me.'

'And—' Walker paused '—why is this of interest to me?'

'First, I will pay you a great deal of money. Tell me, how much did you make from finding Orlando Brandon?'

'Enough.'

'Whatever you earned for finding Brandon, I will pay double. More than enough, you might say.'

Walker raised his eyebrows as if to say, 'That's a very generous offer.'

'I think it is not the money that will interest you. It is the case itself. You will have very little to go on. It will be a challenge. For example, Alex hated—hates—being photographed. There is no photograph of him as far as I can discover.'

'Not even a passport?'

'He has that with him.'

'And are trackers already after him?'

'Impossible to tell.'

'How long since you heard from him?'

'Six months.'

Walker was tugging at his right earlobe with thumb and forefinger. She pointed at his ear and said, 'You'll end up with one ear longer than the other.'

'What?'

'Pulling your ear like that.'

'My father used to do it. It's a gesture I've inherited.'

Their glasses were empty apart from melting ice.

'Well?'

'I'll call you,' he said, and this time she gave him her number.

The strangeness of her story bothered Walker less than the way it challenged his gathering sense of inertia. He had been drifting for months, uncertain what to do, forming vague plans but lacking the resolution to see anything through. He was waiting for a decisive moment—a moment that would impel him to make a decision—but no such moment came. Every morning he had breakfast at the Café Madrid and walked down to the ocean. Every other day he lifted weights. Afternoons he went running along the beach. Evenings he drank. His growing addiction to this regime of fitness—and the drinking it served to offset—was one of a number of small details that made him postpone any commitment to change. He had so little to do that even minor chores like going to the bank became major events in his day. The more he pondered things the more restless he became, floundering in a sea of impulses. He had no responsibilities, no obligations, and so found himself paralysed by choice, waiting to see what came his way. Now something had come his way—a challenge, she had said—and he balked at the prospect, longed instead for his current life to continue indefinitely and without interruption.

Excerpted from The Search by Geoff Dyer. Copyright © 2014 by Geoff Dyer. Excerpted by permission of Graywolf Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.