A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

When Jerry Delfont, an aimless travel writer with writer’s block (his “dead hand”), receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs. Merrill Unger, with news of a scandal involving an Indian friend of her son’s, he is intrigued. Who is the dead boy, found on the floor of a cheap hotel room? How and why did he die? And what is Jerry to make of a patch of carpet, and a package containing a human hand?
He is swiftly captivated by the beautiful, mysterious Mrs. Unger—and revived by her t...