Fools' River
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4.5 • 20 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The eighth installment in Timothy Hallinan's Edgar Award–nominated ticking-clock thriller about the most dangerous facets of Bangkok's seedy underbelly.
The two most difficult days in Bangkok writer Poke Rafferty’s life begin with an emergency visit from Edward Dell, the almost-boyfriend of Poke’s teenage daughter, Miaow. 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.
It soon becomes apparent that Buddy is in the hands of a pair of killers who prey on Bangkok’s “sexpats”; when his accounts are empty, he’ll be found, like a dozen others before him, floating facedown in a Bangkok canal with a weighted cast on his unbroken leg. His money is almost gone.
Over forty-eight frantic hours, Poke does everything he can to locate Buddy before it’s too late.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At one point in Hallinan's outstanding eighth thriller set in Bangkok and featuring American expat Poke Rafferty (after 2015's The Hot Countries), Rose, Poke's Thai wife, muses, "People never knew until it was too late... whether the place where they pitched their tent was on the banks of some Fools' River." That noirish metaphor is central to the missing-persons case that travel writer Poke, who has a reputation for solving problems outside official channels, takes on through his teenage daughter, Miaow. Buddy Dell, the independently wealthy father of Edward, a school friend of Miaow's, has vanished. Since Buddy maintains four separate houses, each presided over by a different "auntie," his absence from Edward's home is not unusual except that it's been 12 days. Poke soon learns that a dozen other men, most of them foreigners, have recently disappeared, only to be found floating in a canal with casts on at least one leg. Perhaps Buddy has fallen victim to the same criminal or criminals. Hallinan makes the most of his chosen setting, as well as the challenges his ethical lead faces to save a life, despite the indifference of a corrupt police force. Fans of hard-boiled detective fiction will feel right at home.
Customer Reviews
Fool's River
Hold on to your baht and take a fast-paced romp through the colorful, and pungent klongs, bars, and streets of Bangkok.
Poke Rafferty, and his crew — Rose, his wife and former bar girl; Miaow, the precocious street urchin they adopted several books back; Arthit, Clemente and Arnand, from that rare breed of straight Thai cops; Edward, Miaow's would-be boyfriend; a Lao ladyboy, dirty cops, Thai villains, and a few old men gone to seed in an expat bar in Patpong — race across Bangkok in a frantic search for a kidnapped expat whose got just 48 hours to live. As always, Hallinan delivers a great story with enough local detail to satisfy this frequent traveler.
Go on, dive in and enjoy this book, then go back and read the other titles in the series. I highly recommended it.