The Fear Artist Is an Award Winner

By Chester Campbell

Tim Hallinan is my favorite thriller author. His Poke Rafferty series hits you at the gut level. The characters are a diverse lot that will tug at your heartstrings, make you laugh, absolutely infuriate you, and bring about a dozen other feelings. But they'll remain indelibly impressed on your mind. The stories take you into the heart of Bangkok's seamy side and keep you on the edge of your seat as Poke tangles with a succession of bad guys. I just finished the fifth book in the series, The Fear Artist.

With Poke's Thai wife, Rose, and their adopted daughter, Miaow, visiting Rose's mother in the north of the country, Poke is ready to repaint their house when he collides with a man who dies of gunshots in his arms. The man utters a woman's name and a U.S. city before dying. This makes Rafferty a person a great interest to Thai secret agents who want to know his connection to the dead man and what he was told.

Poke winds up on the run from the police and an American named Murphy who is working with them. In an effort to find out what he's up against, Poke seeks out a motley group of former spies who inhabit one of Bangkok's offbeat  bars. He learns he's been caught on the fringes of the War on Terror being masterminded by Murphy, a man who was involved in the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War. He's the most sadistic, unprincipled character I've run across in ages.

Like all of Hallinan's books, The Fear Artist delves deeply into the rationale behind the characters' actions. He brings back Poke's half-Chinese half-sister, a sharp-witted, quick-acting teenager, and his best friend Arthit, a Bangkok policeman, who he unhappily deceives. Poke, an expatriate American, expresses a lot of angst at his home country's actions involving the War on Terror and treatment of ordinary citizens, but he is no less critical of his adopted country's policies.

Two Vietnamese women, one with leftover wounds from the war in the sixties and seventies, and a mistreated waif of a girl, a daughter of Murphy's, are particularly poignant characters. The ex-Russian spy Vladimir lends some comic relief to the story.

The Fear Artist, check it out here, should win some awards.

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Review: The Queen of Patpong

Review by Beth Terrell

A few years ago, I passed a rack of discounted hardback books. One captured my attention. The title, A Nail Through the Heart, was evocative; the cover was attractive; and I had just read a post by the author, Timothy Hallinan, on DorothyL, a newslist for mystery lovers. Wanting to support a fellow DL-er, I picked it up and read a few lines. They were good. Very good. So, I bought it, beginning a long-term love affair with Hallinan's series of beautifully written thrillers set in Bangkok and featuring "rough travel writer" Poke Rafferty. Poke writes travel books for people who want to experience the parts of the world not included on the usual lists of tourist destinations. Some of those parts are a little seedy, a little gritty, and a little dangerous. When he arrives in Bangkok to research a new book, he falls in love with Thailand, the Thai people--and with Rose, a beautiful bar dancer in the red-light district of Patpong. Together, they rescue and adopt Miaow, a street child who struggles to reconcile her love for her adoptive parents with her shame about her roots and about Rose's former profession.

In the fourth book in the series, The Queen of Patpong, as Poke, Rose, and Miaow are dining at a favorite restaurant when Rose "drops her fork with a clatter on top of her cup, which tips over and spreads coffee across the tablecloth." A man approaches the table, someone who knew Rose when she was a dancer. After threatening her and her family, he swaggers away, and Rose tells Poke that the man is someone she thought--and had hoped--she'd killed.

With the help of a menacing partner, the stranger begins a cat-and-mouse game clearly intended to end with Rose's death--and the deaths of her loved ones. Hallinan plays out the plot masterfully, juxtaposing the elements of a tense, modern-day thriller with a sensitive exploration of Rose's past and her transformation from an awkward village girl nicknamed "Stork" to the strong, confident woman she has become.

Much of the book takes place in the past, beginning with Rose's discovery that, although her father has accepted money from her teacher to keep her at home and in school, he has also sold her to someone in the sex trade. She escapes this all-too-common situation with the help of Nana, a former village girl turned bar dancer. Nana also "sells" her, but into a more benevolent system.

Hallinan balances the various elements of this book perfectly. The tension is high throughout. The moral message is both powerful and subtle. Poke's determination to save both the lives and the emotional fabric of his family engages the reader from beginning to end, and the portrayal of Rose is pitch-perfect--thoughtful, insightful, and always authentic.

If you've already fallen in love with Timothy Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series, The Queen of Patpong will cement your loyalty. If you haven't...it's probably because you haven't read him.

Breathing Water

By Beth Terrell

A few years ago, I read Timothy Hallinan's A Nail Through the Heart, which introduced as a secondary character a street child called "Superman." Superman was rough, unwashed, and defiant, kicking an addiction to yaa baa, and fierce in his protection of the small group of street children he looked after. (Miaow, Poke's adopted daughter, was once one of them.) I loved the book; I liked protagonist Poke Rafferty and his cobbled-together family; but Superman completely won my heart.

Now, in Breathing Water, Hallinan brings Superman back to the page, and while the book would be breathtaking without him, his presence puts the book firmly onto my "best books of all time" list. This beautifully written book is the third in Hallinan's series of Bangkok mysteries. It is certainly the richest and the most complex. Once again, the book features "rough travel writer" Poke Rafferty, his Thai wife, Rose, and their adopted daughter, Miaow.

When the book opens, Poke is engaged in a poker game that is actually a sting operation engineered by his friend Arthit, a police officer. Poke is playing with a group of very rich, very powerful men.The three millionaires were expected, but no one expected the man Poke thinks of as "the Big Guy"--Khun Pan. Pan started his life as a penniless village boy, and somehow he has become one of the richest men in Thailand. He is a hero to the poor and dispossesed, and some believe that, if he wanted to become prime minister, he might actually win. To the powerful elite who have always controlled things and believe they should always control things, this is unacceptable.

During the game, Poke wins the opportunity to write Pan's biography. The next morning he is threatened by a nameless faction who threatens to kill him and his family if he writes the book. Soon after, he is threatened by another faction who threatens to kill him and his family if he doesn't write it. Both groups mean business, and both have made it clear that they are watching and can snatch his wife and daughter any time they want.

Poke finds himself, his family, and his friend Arthit caught in a political struggle between the country's richest, most powerful, most corrupt, and most ruthless people. In the midst of this crisis, Superman reenters Poke's life. This time, he has a young woman and a baby in tow; they have run afoul of a baby-selling ring, and Superman (now known as Boo) hopes Poke can help them.

Hallinan portrays the political situation with depth and sensitivity. Pan and the other players are multilayered and complex. It is clear that Hallinan loves Bangkok with all his being, and that he, like his protagonist, has "a yellow heart."

Although all three books stand on their own, I believe Breathing Water is greatly enriched by a knowledge of the events of the previous two books. The more mature Superman's is all the more engaging if you've met him as a child. A subplot involving Arthit and his wife Noi is made all the more poignant by Hallinan's measured revelation of their relationship throughout the series. Miaow's conflicted feelings about the world and her place in it have grown in complexity from the first book to the third.

This book has been called the best thriller of the past five years. I only wish I'd been the first to say it.

Want a Different Cup of Tea?

By Chester Campbell

Ben Small was right on with his depiction of that “scary dude,” James Lee Burke. I’d like to offer a completely different cup of tea, one I found both enjoyable and intriguing. I’m referring to Timothy Hallinan and his new series featuring expatriate travel writer Poke Rafferty. Poke (or Tim) chose Bangkok as his stomping grounds, and he haunts the seamy underbelly of the Thai capital.

I reached the end of the first chapter of the first book, A Nail Through the Heart, before I realized it was written in the present tense. Like lots of readers, I harbor a prejudice against present tense. Tim Hallinan does it seamlessly.

I recently finished the second in the series, The Fourth Watcher, which brings in more of Poke’s family background. Talk about dysfunctional families, you ain’t seen nothing yet. His immediate circle includes fianceé Rose, a former go-go dancer in Patpong Road, where bucks or baht will buy you anything, and adopted daughter Miaow, a waif he rescued off the street.

Past experience added to the intrigue of the setting as I spent a month traveling in Southeast Asia with my then-wife, son, and Korean daughter-in-law. That was back in 1987 when my son had just completed a tour of duty with an Army Special Forces team assigned to Thailand. We visited Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, and The Philippines.

The character Raffery’s name brought to mind Raffles Hotel in Singapore, where the Singapore Sling was invented. He’s much more complicated than the drink. The Bangkok descriptions reminded me of walking through the city on a Sunday morning, at times pushing it to keep pace with my son, a two-mile cross-country runner. Plus later in the week marveling at the dissonance of travel sounds while cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, and assorted wheeled vehicles dodged about through hairbreadth holes in the traffic flow.

Tim Hallinan’s descriptions are not lengthy. In fact, most are quite brief. Pithy would be a good label. They paint a colorful picture in a few words. Like this image of Rose’s friend clutching a brown paper bag full of money:

“Peachy is staring at the bag as though it has a red digital countdown on its side, signaling the number of seconds before the world ends.”

Or this one:

“The man nearest Rafferty also has a gun in his hand, a tiny popgun just big enough to die from.”

The books are thrillers and full of suspense, but it’s the characters, including the city of Bangkok, that keep the story shining with brilliance and unputdownableness (so I made that one up; I can be creative, too).

As you might have guessed, Tim divides his time about half in the States (he hails from Los Angeles) and half in Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand and Cambodia. He also teaches writing and has a wealth of information on learning the craft under Writers’ Resources at his website: http://www.timothyhallinan.com/.