Guest Review by Peterson “A Dead Hand” by Paul Theroux

Eric Peterson Reviews “A Dead Hand” by Paul Theroux
Or Theroux Meets Stieg Larsson

Ask me who’s the most talented living writer today, and I’d react without hesitation: Paul Theroux. His Hotel Honolulu is one of a handful of books I relish rereading every year, and his travel journal Riding the Iron Rooster has been a personal recommendation since the day I picked it up.

Whether fiction or non-fiction, Theroux’s passages describing third world countries are masterly, and he paints characters with a proficiency that, at its best, is unequaled in modern literature. For example, in his latest novel, A Dead Hand, his characters are captivating, and his vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of a crumbling Calcutta are powerful.

So what goes wrong here?

As a Paul Theroux fan, I like to think he was talked into doing this book—a formula murder thriller in the (gulp) detective-novel genre. I tell myself it must have been a greedy agent or publisher—one eye on the bestseller list, the other on a ranch in Montana. Imagine the possibilities here! We’re talking Paul Theroux meets Stieg Larsson! For me, it’s like watching Ernest Hemingway doing an episode of “Dancing with the Stars”—I’d look at it, but I’d also wish to hell someone had talked him out of it.

Exotic location, a dead body, a beautiful woman who asks travel writer Jerry Delfont to take her case (huh?), Howard, Jerry’s cheerful friend from the U.S. consulate general’s office who helps him solve the crime—down the malodorous, torturous murder-mystery road we go. There’s something creepy going on when Jerry takes tea with celebrity travel writer Paul Theroux—they’re instant enemies—and Theroux’s immoderation handling the bedroom scenes made me wince for him as an author. (But here’s the takeaway: Merrill Unger is a beguiling woman with secrets, and under her power the worldly-wise Jerry becomes more or less Hermie from “Summer of ’42.”)

You can almost feel Theroux straining to pull the reader through the story, as if he were peddling us all uphill on a cycle-rickshaw. And it shouldn’t feel that way because the writing is so good—that’s what kills me about this book.

Eric Peterson is the author of the novel “Life as a Sandwich.”