Bangkok—the
Year of the Monkey. Calvino’s Chinese New Year celebration is
interrupted by a call to Lumpini Park Lake, where Thai cops
have just fished the body of a farang cameraman. CNN
is running dramatic footage of several Burmese soldiers on the
Thai border executing students.
Calvino
follows the trail of the dead man to a feature film crew where
he hits the wall of silence. On the other side of that wall,
Calvino and Colonel Pratt discover and elite film unit of old
Asia hands with connections to influential people in Southeast
Asia. They find themselves matched against a set of farangs
conditioned for urban survival and willing to go for a knock-out
punch.
Praise
“In
Asia Hand, Moore delivers a gritty view of Bangkok,
a city of “contrasts” where “things that are never done happen
just about every day.”
—www.mysteryscenemag.com
“Fast
moving and hypnotic, this was a great read.”
—Crime
Spree Magazine
“In
Asia Hand, Christopher Moore builds the atmosphere,
the ugliness, brilliantly.... This ain’t pretty boy, touristy
stuff that passes for detective fiction.... The wash of human
degradation threatens to drown you.”
—Tarun Cherian, Deccan Herald (India)
“Moore’s
hard-boiled, noir plots and style place him hands-down as
one of the top current crime writers.”
—Tom McLaren, Gallup Journey
“Navigating
Bangkok’s dark sidestreets and myriad underground cultures requires
keen insight as well as the courage to look at corruption but
see the hope that lies beneath. Vincent Calvino, a disbarred
American lawyer turned PI, has been doing that for years as
Christopher G. Moore shows in his award-winning series.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine, Oline H. Cogdill
“Asia
Hand is the kind of novel that grabs you and never lets
go.”
—The Times of Inda
“Asia
Hand is a skillfully crafted, addictive ride through one
of the planet's most raw and vivid cities. Moore and Calvino
define the dark pungent cocktail that is Asian noir.”
—Eliot Pattison, author of the “Inspector
Shan” series
“In
[Asia Hand], crime writer Christopher G. Moore does
what he does best: kill someone and let the brash, unsuave,
unpretentious Calvino unearth the dirty details. What follows
is a journey into the big, bad, dark world of Bangkok politics
and double-dealings. The stakes are high when luck forsakes
the duo.”
—Hindustan Times
“Moore's
stylish second Bangkok thriller… explores the dark side of both
Bangkok and the human heart. Felicitous prose speeds the action
along….”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Asia
Hand] highly recommended to readers of hard-boiled detective
fiction, as well as the classic American tough-guy authors
(Raymond Chandler or, more recently, Robert B. Parker).”
—Booklist
“A
well-crafted piece of modern noir fiction … well plotted, intricate
and intelligent … What makes [Asia Hand] work is Moore’s
insights into the interactions between ex-pats/foreigners (farangs)
in Thailand and the Thai people… [Moore’s Vincent Calvino] series
is great and beats the pants off of most crime fiction sitting
on the shelves of my local bookstore.”
—NancyO, www.2010theyearinbooks.com
“Moore’s
Vinny Calvino is a worthy successor to Raymond Chandler’s
Philip Marlowe and Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.”
—The Nation
“The
top foreign author focussing on the Land of Smiles, Canadian
Christopher G. Moore clearly has a first-hand understanding
of the expat milieu. . . . Moore is perspicacious.”
—Bangkok Post
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