April 4: The lawyer for the author Harper Lee, Tonja B. Carter, received a notice on Friday that an investigation by Alabama officials into whether Lee, who is 88 and confined to an assisted living facility, was manipulated into publishing a second novel has been closed and no evidence of abuse or neglect had been found.

Go Set a Watchman is scheduled to come out on July 14.

Bobby Segall, a lawyer for Carter, confirmed receipt of the letter, which was dated April 1 and sent by the state department of human resources, the agency that has led the inquiry into whether Lee was coerced into agreeing to publish a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird this summer.

Segall said that neither Carter nor he had any further comment. The inquiry was begun in response to at least one anonymous complaint brought to state officials.

A spokesperson for the human resources department, Barry Spear, said the agency had wrapped up its investigation and sent Carter a letter, but he said that he was prohibited by law from discussing the inquiry's findings.

Word of the state's determination comes several weeks after an agency that assisted in the investigation, the Alabama Securities Commission, announced it had ended its role in the inquiry.

At the time, the commission's director, Joseph Borg, said his investigators had interviewed Lee and found "she has opinions and seems to be aware of what is going on with her book and the book deal".

In Monroeville, Alabama, Lee's hometown, and elsewhere, some of her friends and acquaintances have said they are concerned as to whether the author is lucid enough to have agreed to the publication of the recently discovered manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, now set for July from HarperCollins.

She had long said she was happy to have just published the single book.

Lee suffered a stroke in 2007 and has severe hearing and vision problems.

New York Times News Service