Song of Kali (Gateway Essentials), Dan Simmons

Calcutta, a monstrous city of never-ending slums, illness and misery, is clasped in the foetid embrace of an ancient cult. At its rotting core is the Goddess Kali: the dark mother of pain, four-armed and eternal, her song the sound of destruction and death. Robert Luczak has been hired by a New York magazine to find a renowned Indian poet who has reappeared, under strange circumstances, years after he was considered dead.

But nothing is simple in Calcutta, and before long, Luczak's routine assignment becomes a nightmare... it is rumoured that the poet has been brought resurrected in a bloody and grisly ceremony of human sacrifices.