A Dead Hand

A travel writer is drawn into a strange criminal case, and an even stranger romantic affair, in a novel that brings India “brilliantly, blazingly to life” ( The Washington Post ).   When Jerry Delfont, an aimless, blocked travel writer, receives a letter from an American philanthropist, Mrs. Merrill Unger, he is intrigued. She informs him about a scandal, involving an Indian friend of her son’s. Who is the dead boy, found on the floor of a cheap hotel room? How and why did he die? And what