A Handful of Dust

Take one of the most famous missing persons of the 20th Century, a renowned New York State Governor, a 21st Century crazed Navy Captain, and place them in 1930 depression-riddled New York City, then toss in a 21st Century hotshot FBI undercover agent and you have the ingredients of a fast paced thriller that will keep you awake turning pages.

A Handful of Dust is the story of FBI agent Matt Wells battling his own emotional pain and guilt. Wells is selected by the NSA to journey back in time and find fugitive Navy Captain Walter Kinlaw, who is determined to assassinate Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Judge Joseph Crater.

Kinlaw, the son of Senator Spenser Kinlaw, devastated by his father's suicide, which he attributed to a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and a dark secret his father held, made an unauthorized excursion into the past using an experimental top secret device called a Closed Timelike Curve or CTC.  He enters the past on August 6, 1930, the day of the mysterious disappearance of Judge Joseph Crater.  Historical records say Crater entered a tan cab on West 45th Street after leaving the Billy Haas Restaurant and then disappeared into oblivion.

In Kinlaw's room, newspaper clippings of the Crater disappearance are found along with photographs of Crater and New York Governor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who appointed Crater to his judgeship.  Crosshairs are drawn over both of them.  What does the Navy Captain want with Crater and FDR?

Take an incredible journey through 1930 New York City and explore the mysteries of time with an added twist to Goethe's, "Elective Affinities."

"Robert Pajer's 'A Handful of Dust' is a great read--a gripping and historically accurate tour of New York in 1930 and the events surrounding the disappearance of Judge Joseph Crater. Anyone interested in the period should find it fascinating, as I did."--Richard J. Tofel, author, Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind.