It’s impossible to put
these in any sort of qualitative order, it depends on what you like and the
mood you are in. I can only list the
books (or series’ of books) in the order in which I discovered them.
Private Dancer – by Stephen Leather: it was once suggested
that single men should be issued with a
free copy on arrival at Bangkok Airport. It’s a “how not to” guide for
sex tourists but its also a good story with some interesting twists. “Everyone”
who likes books and has a passing interest in the Thai bar scene has read
Private Dancer and will probably have a strong view on its merits. The harshest
critics are those who have steeped themselves in the ex-pat lifestyle and feel
the story is too simplistic. I really enjoyed it and particularly liked the
technique by which each key scene is described from the perspective of
different characters. It’s an ingenious way of demonstrating the cultural gulf
between the various players. The same circumstances can be interpreted in
totally different ways depending on whether they are being viewed by a Thai or
a westerner.
The Bangkok Series – by John Burdett: I found Bangkok 8 in a
bookshop at Suvarnabhumi Airport as I was waiting for a flight back to London.
Unfortunately I did not start reading it straight away. That’s why I still had
about an hour’s reading to do when we were only 30 minutes short of Heathrow
Airport. For the first time in my life, I was praying for my flight to go into
a holding pattern, I could not wait to find out what happened. It was one of
those books you start to read more slowly as you get to the end, you just don’t
want it to end. Torture. I finished the book in the taxi home and was hugely
relieved to find that it was part of a series. The quality does not let up. The
author knows the region like the back of his hand and has a quite extraordinary imagination.
That combined with a fascination for eastern mysticism makes a powerful
combination. It’s hard to believe he used to be a lawyer but easy to see why he
quit. I went back and found an earlier book called “The Last 6 million seconds”
about the British handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese. Completely different
style but every bit as engaging.
The Poke Rafferty Series – by Timothy Hallinan
This short summary
appears in “Thai Lottery… and Other Stories from Pattaya, Thailand:
“Rafferty is a super smart travel writer
turned detective. Living with an ex
bar-girl; the magnificent Rose, he unravels complex mysteries, whilst battering
bad guys and taking care of Miaow, his adorable adopted daughter. He's part Irish, part Filipino and in spite
of the strange first name, extremely cool.”
Many books based in Thailand, have been
written by visitors, people passing through who may have a good story to tell but
are unable to capture the essence of the country. Hallinan is a glorious
exception. The story lines are sharp and clever but the key to these books is
in characterisation and atmosphere. If the author ever reads this, he can try
to find a compliment in the following sentence, “when I read your books, I can
smell the streets of Bangkok”. It’s
there, honestly.
Hallinan captures the feel of the city
perfectly. You could be reading on the beach and you would still be transported
to a polluted, overcrowded, humid, vaguely threatening metropolis in your
mind’s eye. Each character is perfectly drawn, any man would yearn for a woman
like Rose and the feisty Miaow would be the perfect daughter. The villains are
genuinely scary and whilst you suspect a happy ending (of the literary variety
of course), Hallinan manages to make you think it might not happen this time.
Brilliant stuff, the next one is already
out and I will be buying the e-book once they drop that vertiginous £11 price
tag for the download.
Killed at the Whim of a Hat – by Colin Cotterrill
For me this was
“Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” comes to Thailand, and I mean that in the
nicest possible way. A meaningless analogy if you have never read the Alexander
McCall Smith series, so I will try to explain.
The heroine is Jimm
Juree, a crime writer for the local Chiang Mai newspaper, but family loyalty
forces her to relocate to the south. She tries to resuscitate her career by
investigating the death of an abbott and the discovery of two ancient skeletons
in a long buried vehicle. The characters just jump off the age at you, despite
the fact that the author has attempted something quite audacious. The book is
written in the first person, so a western male is writing as a Thai female.
Clearly there are limitations to my ability to say he has nailed it, but from
the perspective of another western man, I really think that is exactly what he
has done.
The Thailand he writes
about is one I definitely recognise, and he captures the often bizarre nature
of the place that makes it simultaneously bewildering and captivating. Only the
second term applies to Mr Cotterill’s book. The crimes are solved with cunning,
subtlety and charm rather than with guns and violence, hence the McCall Smith
analogy.
I am delighted to see
there is another book in the series. As soon as I have finished writing this
blog, I will be straight onto it.
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