content: I kid you not, the *entire premise* of this book is how inscrutable and exotic and creepy Indian people are...what with their bad hygiene, and the weird food they eat, and their yucky poverty, and their bizarro religion with all those freaky goddesses, and oh yeah, human sacrifice...besides, Calcutta is an EVIL city, do you understand?!?! EEEEEEVIL! EEEEEEVIL!!!Characters in this book repeat different variations on that sentence approximately seven thousand times. Maybe if I could buy into that premise - that Calcutta, a city of more than 10 million people, is just EEEEEEEVIL, poisoned by a loathesome and murderous vileness utterly incomprehensible to the rational Western mind - then this book might have scared me. But I don't buy that, because it's stupid xenophobic garbage, and so this book just got on my nerves. I'm sorry you didn't like your vacation in Calcutta, Mr. Simmons. Cripes. Now give it a rest.