In the middle of the tourist season in tropical South India, four American women meet over breakfast at the Hotel Delite, managed by Anita Ray, an Indian-American young woman, and her aunt. Two of the Americans, Jean and Marge, are nurses traveling together; Emily is traveling with friends, and Candy is traveling alone. Jean boasts she is on her way to Thailand, and from there plans to cross into Burma on a secret humanitarian mission, her second. Everyone is suitably impressed, including Anita.But within twenty-four house at the resort, one of the women is deathly ill and another is missing. Anita can find no cause for the first woman's sudden bad turn, and a search of the area turns up nothing more than a fragment of a sweater the missing woman was last seen wearing.While Anita continues to search for the missing woman, she must also contend with a man shadowing her and a suspicious series of encounters in the hotel ledger, payments to a mysterious employee she has never seen. When Anita is attacked by an unknown man, two of the least likely helpers come to her aid, offering a terrifying simple solution.For all their beauty and lushness, the tropics can have unexpected effects on newcomers, some of them permanent. This story opens up a little-known world of life behind the scenes in an exotic setting

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