First Chapter: Fools' River by Timothy Hallinan

Title: Fools' River by Timothy Hallinan
Published November 7, 2017; Soho Crime
Genre: mystery, thriller
Setting: Bangkok, Thailand

First paragraphs:
The blinds are drawn the way they've been drawn forever, with the inside edges of the slats tilted to block his view of the sky and the fall of sunlight through the window, which means he has no idea what time it is. Not that knowing would do him any good. 

He had a watch once, a gold one, French or Swiss or something like that, European, but he hasn't seen it since he got here. 
Wherever he is. 

Why are the blinds angled that way?

Book description:
The two most difficult days in Bangkok writer Poke Rafferty's life begin with an emergency visit from Edward Dell, the almost-boyfriend of his teenage daughter, Maiow. The boy's father, Buddy, a late-middle-aged womanizer who has moved to Bangkok for happy hunting, has disappeared, and money is being siphoned out of his bank and credit card accounts. (publisher)

Would you continue reading based on the opening paragraphs and other info?
MEME: Every Tuesday Vicki @ I'd Rather Be at the Beach hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where readers share the first paragraph, maybe two, of a book that they are reading or plan to read soon

Book Reviews: The Marco Effect; and For the Dead

Check out Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader.

For the Dead

The Marco Effect

I became quite attached to the young protagonists in these two mystery novels, two crime series books set in Bangkok, Thailand and in Denmark, respectively.

Thirteen-year-olds, Miaow and Andrew, in For the Dead, come across a stolen iPhone, a phone belonging to a hit man for a powerful and influential person in the upper echelons of the police department in Bangkok. The phone has pictures that would reveal a major plot and scandal. The two kids naturally become targets, but targets who, young as they are, add to the suspense as they help Poke Rafferty, fighting to keep them safe, resolve the complex case. For the Dead is the sixth in the Poke Rafferty mystery series by Tim Hallinan, to be released November 4, 2014. My thanks to Soho Press for an advance edition for review.

Fifteen-year-old Marco, in The Marco Effect, discovers a body buried by his uncle Zola and his cohorts, a gang of thieves that force youngsters to become pickpockets in the streets of Denmark. Marco discovers an even bigger and more significant plot linking to the dead man, and he is hunted by both Zola and these new enemies. How he helps the police and Department Q unravel the plot while hiding and running for his life is the main theme of this suspenseful novel. The Marco Effect by Jussi Adler-Olsen was published September 9, 2014 by Dutton Adult. My copy came from the library.

Book beginning of The Marco Effect: 

Prologue
Autumn 2008
Louis Fon's last morning was as soft as a whisper.
He sat up on the cot with sleep in his eyes and his mind still a muddle, patted the little one who had stroked his cheek, wiped the snot from the tip of her brown nose, and stuck his feet into his flip-flops on the stamped clay of the floor.
He stretched, squinting at the light as the cackle of hens and the distant cries of boys as they cut bananas from the palms drifted into the sunbaked room. 

I rated both The Marco Effect and For the Dead a 5! Great reading for lovers of international crime fiction with compelling plots, sympathetic characters, and unusual settings!

Herbie's Game by Timothy Hallinan: Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Herbie's Game: Junior Bender Mystery #4 by Timothy Hallinan
To be published July 15, 2014; Soho Crime

Junior Bender, the clown prince of crime fiction, returns in his most hardboiled adventure yet—a tale that will take Junior Bender deep into a murderous conspiracy in present day Los Angeles and  uncover an increasingly confusing legacy of his burglar-mentor, Herbie Mott, who until very recently was always one-step-ahead of just about everybody.

It’s everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley’s top “executive crook,” sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, thereby ensuring that the hitter doesn’t know who hired him. Then one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper on which he has written the names of the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can turn to to solve his problem is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.

But Junior already knows exactly who took Wattles’s list: the signature is too obvious. It was Herbie Mott, Junior’s burglar mentor and second father—and when Junior seeks him out to discuss the missing list, he finds Herbie very unpleasantly murdered. Junior follows the links in the chain back toward the killer, and as he does, he learns disturbing things about Herbie’s hidden past. He has to ask himself how much of the life he’s lived for the past twenty years has been of his own making, and how much of it was actually Herbie’s game. (publisher)

What book are you waiting for? 

Book Review: THE FEAR ARTIST by Timothy Hallinan

Title: The Fear Artist (Poke Rafferty Mystery #5)
Author: Timothy Hallinan
Kindle; Hardcover to be released July 17, 2012; Soho Press
Genre: thriller

The main character: Poke Rafferty is a travel writer living in Thailand with his wife Rose and adopted daughter Miaow. He has gotten involved in solving murders and crimes before in the City of Angels which is Bangkok, and this is the fifth in the thriller series featuring Poke, in which crime and politics just seems to single him out for involvement.

The plot: Poke is minding his own business on the Bangkok streets, buying paint for their apartment while his wife and daughter are away visiting relatives in the northeast. Demonstrators against government policies in the volatile south of Thailand are suddenly dispersed by police and come rushing down the street when Poke is carrying two cans of paint out of a store. He is hit and sent sprawling on the sidewalk by one of the runners, a heavyset foreign man, who collapses in his arms, evidently having been shot at least three times by the police. The dying man, an American, whispers three words to Poke before he dies.

Poke goes into hiding for fear of his life and warns his wife and child to stay away from Bangkok indefinitely. The Thai police have already questioned him about the dead man, whom the CIA and other unknown people are curious about. Poke uses former spies from Russia and Eastern Europe and former Vietnam veterans, all living in Bangkok, to find out more about a red-haired man who is behind the attempt to link Poke with the dead man in a situation that Poke knows nothing about. The red-haired man is involved in resolving the Muslim insurgency and the "War on Terror" in the south of Thailand.

Help for Poke comes from his half-sister Ming Li, Poke's police friend Arthit, and his savvy neighbor Mrs. Pongsiri, to avoid the Thai police and the red-haired man while he figures out the significance of the three words the dying man whispered to him.

My comments: I read the book twice to get all the nuances of the plot, which was complicated to me as it involves Southeast Asia's past and its present. I read it first noting all the personal relationships that are important in the book - Poke with his wife and teenage daughter; his friend Arthit who carries around the memory of his deceased wife Noi; Arthit's growing relationship with Anna, the friend of his dead wife; Poke's daughter's friendship with a nerdy teen; the red-headed man's relationship with a drug addicted wife and a crazed teenage daughter, and so on.

I read the book again to get the political lowdown of Vietnam in the past and Southern Thailand in the present. The plot catches it all together neatly, while you travel every step of the way with Poke in hiding and Poke detecting, planning, surviving and deducing how to get out of his strange and unwanted situation.

".... But Jesus, Poke. You're supposed to be a travel writer, as far as I know. How does someone like you get this devious?" 

"I'm just writing," Poke says. "I got stuck in somebody else's story. All I'm trying to do is write my way out." ( ch. 26, from an uncorrected proof. The final copy may differ.)

A great thriller that will draw you in, into the relationships between what will seem like real people, and into a political situation with what will seem like true life villains. The characters are well drawn and realistic, the plot is superb, the thrill of the race is exciting, the setting in flooded Bangkok is exotic and a great place to be, from an armchair.

Thanks to the author for an ARC of The Fear Artist . My objective rating: 5/5.

E-Book Review: Little Elvises by Timothy Hallinan

Title: Little Elvises: (The Junion Bender Series) Kindle Edition
Author: Timothy Hallinan
Publisher: Hallinan Consulting, LLC (August 16, 2011)
Genre: thriller

I am a great fan of satire. Jonathan Swift's books were among my favorites back  in school, though I pretty much stick with  modern books nowadays. But I was delighted to find some modern satire combined with a genre I like - mysteries - not like the classics of course, but satire that made me nod my head and chuckle.

The book was an e-Book, Little Elvises, a Junior Bender thriller by Tim Hallinan, a very modern day writer who takes off on LA and Hollywood culture in his fairly new mystery series. The writer gives a bird's eye view of the goings-on in the San Fernando Valley, in Hollywood, and in La La Land in general.

Little Elvises comes off as wry humor and is very entertaining. It's also a good thriller. It has an engaging character, Junior Bender, who is sympathetic and as honest as a professional burglar can be who works for other crooks. Even though the thriller itself is fiction,  the social commentary is there and all pervasive. I loved the irony in the humor.

Product description: 2011 Edgar and Macavity nominee, Tim Hallinan, brings back Junior Bender, a top-of-the-line burglar who also works as a private eye – for crooks, and the hero of CRASHED, the first in the mystery/thriller series.  Little Elvises is a hilarious Los Angeles thriller about old-time rock-and-roll, missing persons, the world's oldest gangster, and a terrifying if somewhat hapless hit man named Fronts.

I received a complimentary copy of this e-Book.  

Book Review: The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan, a thriller

Teacher Suttikul snaps off the flashlight, and Kwan throws her arms around the woman. Hugging her teacher with all her strength, and with her own heart pounding in her ears, Kwan still hears Mr. Partison stop to wait for them, standing alone in the dark.

(ch. 8. This quote is from an uncorrected proof. The final version of the novel may differ. )

The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller
Author: Timothy Hallinan

About the quote: Kwan is a bright, young teenager from the poor northeastern province of Thailand who is promised a scholarship to college by her teacher. How does she land up as a dancer in the red light district of Patpong Road, becoming the Queen of Patpong?

Fast forward to Bangkok many years later and to the beginning of the novel.  Kwan has changed her name to Rose, is happily married to travel writer Poke Rafferty and is the mother of their adopted daughter, Miaow. Rose's settled and contented life is shattered by the re-appearance of  a threatening man with a military bearing, an American who promises to shatter her life.

Rose tells her story to Poke and Miaow, how she became the Queen of Patpong, and how she believed she had escaped her past, which has now come back to haunt and threaten her.

My comments: The story of the Queen of Patpong, from her life in the village to dancing in the bars of Bangkok, to her escape from the stranger who now has returned, is the riveting story that had my heart pounding and my eyes glued to the pages of the book. A literary novel and a thriller rolled into one. The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller has some of the most suspenseful scenes I've ever read in a thriller, and the sociological aspects of the story are heartrending. Hallihan has excellent descriptive power and knows his subjects and their environment well. I gave this novel five stars.

Thanks to the author for providing a galley proof of this book.

Publisher: William Morrow (August 17, 2010)
Hardcover: 304 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061672262
ISBN-13: 978-0061672262

Review linked to Book Review Party Wednesday. Challenge: 100 + Reading Challenge,Thriller and Suspense Reading Challenge. (Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme that invites you to choose two sentences from your current read to illustrate the book.)

Book Review: Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller by Timothy Hallinan


"Behind every great fortune is a great crime..." is the premise for Timothy Hallinan's latest thriller, Breathing Water.

The book is set in the Bangkok of today and has all the complications of its real life - a shaky political situation, great poverty and great wealth, street children and those who prey on them, corruption, and the pull of love and death. This all makes for a great setting for a thriller, plus an engaging plot that pulls all the complexities of the city together.

From the publisher's description:

For American ex-pat writer Poke Rafferty, a late night poker game delivers an unexpected prize: an "opportunity to write the biography of Khun Pan, a flamboyant, vulgar, self-made billionaire with a criminal past and far-reaching political ambitions. The win seems like a stroke of luck, but as with so many things in vibrant, seductive, contradictory Bangkok - a city of innocence and evil, power and poverty - the allure of appearances masks something much darker.

Within a few hours of folding his cards, Rafferty, his wife, Rose, beloved adopted daughter, Miaow, and best friend, Arthit, an honest Bangkok cop, have become pawns in a political struggle among some of Thailand's richest, most powerful, and most ruthless people.

A great book for mystery/thriller readers.