Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | MYSTERY HAL | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Lake Elmo Library | MYSTERY HAL | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | MYSTERY HAL | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Poke Rafferty's hand-made intercultural family is disrupted in unexpectedly complicated ways by the birth of his son, littering their small Bangkok apartment with emotional land mines. At the same time, the most cantankerous member of the small gang of Old Bangkok Hands who hang out at The Expat Bar suddenly goes missing under suspicious circumstances. Engaged in the search for the missing American and the challenges of life with a newborn, Rafferty misses the fact that he's being followed by someone who puts his whole life in Thailand at risk.
Author Notes
Timothy Hallinan was born in 1942. He was a consultant for some of America's top corporations, advising on issues of television sponsorship and audience-building. He created Hallinan Consulting that created educators' websites on behalf of a number of public television programs. He now writes full-time. His works include the Simeon Grist Mystery series, the Poke Rafferty series, and the Junior Bender Mystery series.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Edgar finalist Hallinan's disappointing ninth and last thriller set in Thailand and featuring expat American writer Poke Rafferty (after 2017's Fools' River) finally addresses how Miaow, Poke's adopted daughter, came to be abandoned and tied to a Bangkok bus bench, where he found her in 2007's A Nail Through the Heart. But first much is made of Poke's adjusting to being a biological father and teenage Miaow preparing to portray Eliza Doolittle in a school production of Pygmalion. A subplot about the disappearance of a friend, whose apartment is ominously filled with blood, goes nowhere. Well into the novel, Rafferty encounters Hom, "a filthy, ragged woman... crying her heart out," who knows about Miaow's past--and with whom Miaow has a predictable connection. Best are the sections told from Hom's perspective, in which Hallinan sympathetically presents her desperate attempts to stay alive and her shame about the choices she has made. Atmosphere and character overwhelm the plot. Series fans will best appreciate this one. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Bob Mecoy Literary. (May)
Kirkus Review
Hallinan brings the Thailand-based adventures of expatriate travel writer Poke Rafferty (Fools' River, 2017, etc.) to a close with this ninth installment, which, like so many of the first eight, bears its readers back to a heart-rending past. Except for not sleeping more than two hours at a stretch, Rafferty's living his best life as the father of a new baby. The 2-week-old, named both Frank (after Rafferty's long-estranged father) and Arthit (after his old friend on the Bangkok police), is the subject of conversation everywhere Rafferty goes. Yet the plot seems determined to subordinate the baby and his mother, ex--Patpong dancer Rose, to the other members of his family. Rafferty himself is sucked into the disappearance of Vietnam veteran Bob Campeau, a barfly with whom he'd recently traded words and blows. And the hitherto blank-slate early years of his adopted daughter, Miaow, absorbed by her infatuation with her schoolmate Edward, who's to play Freddy Eynsford-Hill opposite her Eliza Doolittle in the school production of Pygmalion, turn out to be at the heart of Rafferty's stalking by Hom, a masseuse-and-more who's been bullied into the job by a shadowy figure she thinks of as the Sour Man. The connection between Hom and the unsuspecting Rafferty is unfolded in a painfully extended flashback that emerges as the heart of the story and, in some ways, of the series as a whole. Even fans accustomed to Hallinan's lurid, compassionate view of Bangkok may have to fight back tears. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When Hallinan set out to write about Poke Rafferty, an American journalist living in Bangkok with his wife, Rose, a former prostitute, and his adopted daughter, Miaow, his goal--he tells us in the afterword to this concluding volume in the acclaimed series--was to drop a traditional family "into the world capital of instant gratification . . . . a friendly campfire in a world of cold neon." That fire has burned brightly through nine novels and never more so than in this powerful finale, which grafts Poke's search for an expat friend onto the story of Miaow's birth mother, Hom, and the opioid addiction that led her to abandon her child. Hom's backstory occupies the novel's middle section, and it's agonizing yet compelling reading--a vivid portrait of both the horrors of opioids and street life in Bangkok, just beyond the cold neon's glow. The focus on Hom doesn't give Hallinan much time to wrap up the expat's plotline, but readers won't care. This is a family story, above all, and the last scenes drive that point home with the perfect blend of sadness and joy.
