Bloomsbury
Published November 18, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Sir Gabriel Ward, Kings Counsel, is an eccentric but gifted barrister living and working in the ancient Inner Temple of London. On Christmas eve of 1901, the Master Treasurer of the legal institution looks out his window to see him engaging in a snowball fight with boys (and rewarding one with damages of sixpence after hitting his target). It’s annoying: Sir Gabriel doesn’t behave like the other lawyers. He’s an oddball, rarely leaving the surrounding walls of the Temple and obsessively avoiding stepping on cracks between paving stones, even if he is brilliant at trial. But when a box is delivered to his office with a shocking present inside – a mummified severed hand, accompanied by a note reading “can I give you a hand?” – it is Gabriel who comes to his aid. Who sent the gruesome gift? What was the intended message? And whose body does the hand belong to?