Retired 45-year-old English professor Michael Drayton isn't a detective. He's just a guy who loves and restores Italian sports cars, so when he hears about an Alfa Romeo abandoned in the nearby woods, he goes in search of it. When he finally locates it, he gets much more than an old car—he discovers a cold missing-persons case, a possible new love interest, a rekindling of a long-estranged friendship, and a late night threatening phone call telling him to back off.

• Image Courtesy Of Stephen F. Austin State University Press
• PAGE TURNER What's Left to Learn features sexy Italian sports cars, sultry women, colorful characters, and a neo-noir setting in which long buried secrets bubble to the surface.

So begins What's Left to Learn, a thoroughly engaging and propulsive page-turner of novel with an amazing sense of place and time in every scene—little details and asides creating a rich world with a sun-drenched neo-noir vibe where Santa Ana winds blow through the all-too-brief eight days of the story.

Written by retired Cal Poly creative writing professor Al Landwehr, 86, the novel pulls off the neat trick of creating a believable everyman protagonist who through happenstance stumbles upon a long-unsolved mystery revolving around an eccentric and talented artist—a local lothario whose freewheeling lifestyle was the bane of the community's more conservative members, a man who nearly 20 years earlier simply vanished.

Landwehr, an oft-published writer of short stories, started teaching at Cal Poly in 1970 and started a campus-wide creative writing contest in spring of 1971 that continues to this day. He was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1997, and after 43 years at the university, he retired in 2013. He estimates he taught at least 10,000 students over his career. (Full disclosure, I was one of them. I also played tennis with Al and hung around his auto shop where he restored old Italian sports cars, like a Fiat X1/9 that his protagonist Michael Drayton drives.)

"As you know, writers are always told to write about things they know," Landwehr said. "And yes, he's somewhat like me. I was an English professor but didn't leave early, and I was never accused of sexual harassment. Michael Drayton is a borrowed name from a Renaissance poet, and his most famous sonnet, 'Since There's No Help ...' was probably linked to some of my protagonist's characteristics. I played it fast and loose with the literary allusions.

"Michael Drayton and I both played tennis although he quit sooner than I, and cars, yes, Michael Drayton and I have restored Italian cars—namely an Alfa Romeo Spider and a Fiat X1/9 with a removable top, and I do know a road like the one Ellie and Michael drive that fateful night.

• Photo Courtesy Of Allison Freese
• MAN OF LETTERS Former Cal Poly English professor Al Landwehr has a propulsive new novel, What's Left to Learn, with an everyman protagonist whose insatiable curiosity draws him to a thorny mystery.

"I was as surprised as you about the twists and turns of the plot," he continued. "I lost a little sleep worrying if something didn't fit."

Here's what amazes me. Landwehr didn't plan his mystery. He let the tale guide itself. How Landwehr came to write it is a bit of a long story, but the short version is he had an accident playing tennis that led to a traumatic brain injury and long recovery. This enabled him to revisit some of his old writings.

"I reviewed all of my unfinished stories plus four or five unfinished novels," he recalled. "I create as I write, so much is never finished. I have more unfinished stories than I have finished stories. I write because I like to tell stories. Wealth and fame would be nice, but the writing itself comes first. I want to know what happens next. As does the reader.

"In my review of what I had written over 50 years, I found the first two or three chapters of what would become What's Left to Learn, and I liked it, wrote the next chapter, and so on," he continued. "I had no idea how the novel would end—even if it would end. The characters talked and acted, and I wrote it down, slowly eliminating villains; I think it must have been in chapter 14 or 15 before I knew who had done it—if it had been done."

A lot of mystery novels telegraph what's to come, but not this one, probably because Landwehr himself didn't know where it was going. I was clueless until the end, and best of all, it was a joy to read—immersive, fascinating, and vividly told.

"I've gotten a lot of praise—on characterization, sense of place, and a number of people say it would be a good movie; it is very visual. I agree; it's a good read," Landwehr admitted.

He left San Luis Obispo with his wife, Lynne, a researcher at the History Center of San Luis Obispo County, in 2016 to be closer to his family.

"We'd lived in SLO 43 years, but the world was changing, and we have two daughters, two sons-in-law, and four grandkids in Portland," Landwehr explained.

What's crazy is his novel almost didn't get published.

"When I finished the novel, I shopped for an agent, but it was a thankless task. I've never had patience for that part. I put the novel in a drawer. [Former Cal Poly English professor and poet] Kevin Clark had read it, liked it, and asked if he could try to get it published. I said yes, and two months later the Texas [Stephen F. Austin University] Press said they wanted to publish it.

"Kevin then suggested the title—much better than mine had been. Many thanks to Kevin and to my wife, Lynne, who is a great reader as well as a good critic and a wonderful wife for almost 58 years."

Well, buckle up and hit the gas. Only an Italian sports car can keep up with the twists and turns in Landwehr's new novel, which is available through Amazon and other online booksellers. Δ

Contact Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey at [email protected].