The Haunting Hand

Book excerpt: An actress stars in her own off-screen mystery in this Golden Age whodunit from the award-winning Jamaican novelist, poet, and historian. Though originally a medical student specializing in chemistry, twenty-five-year-old Margot Anstruther decides to try her luck as an actress and gets cast in her first role for the Superfilm Company. With the studio’s boorish director taking a personal interest in her, Margot finds herself caught in the middle of two men: her boss and her increasingly jealous suitor, Gene Varley. One night, alone in her midtown Manhattan apartment after a party, Margot is shocked to find a hand reaching out from under her bed. Though Gene and the police find no sign of an intruder, Margot refuses to believe in a supernatural cause. She puts her scientific mind to work delving into her apartment’s strange past—a recent tenants’ disappearance—and walking a fine line between the complicated passions of friends and rivals . . .