For me, it’s a wall safe. From my somewhat specialized perspective, a wall safe is the perfect object. To you, it may be a hole in the wall with a door on it. To me, it’s one hundred percent potential. There’s absolutely no way to know what’s in there. You can only be sure of one thing: Whatever it is, it means a hell of a lot to somebody. Maybe it’s what they’d run into traffic for. A wall safe is just a question mark. With an answer inside. Janice hadn’t told me there would be a safe behind the picture. We’d discussed everything but that. And, of course, that—meaning the thing I hadn’t anticipated—was what screwed me.

Book Review:

Review by Katherine Petersen  (MAR 20, 2011)

Well-known for his Simeon Grist and Poke Rafferty Bangkok series, Tim Hallinan introduces a new series character in Crashed. Junior Bender is a top-of-the-line crook, hired for specific jobs, and pretty much working when his child support payments come due. Junior is also a private investigator, and most of the time, he works for the down-and-out, the underdog and/or those who can’t defend themselves. In essence, he’s a burglar with a good heart.

Junior’s latest assignment has him stealing a painting from a hard-to-enter home, but he finds a safe containing diamonds while he’s in there which delays his exit. These extra few minutes give the big dogs out back a chance to get inside and launch an attack. Junior’s escape resembles an action scene on the big screen that involves a sedative and a chandelier, and he manages to get out of the house with only cuts and bruises only to find himself in a worse situation: a crooked cop has a gun to his head.

It gets complicated but essentially Junior has to help prevent the sabotage of a porn film or the video of him stealing the painting will be given to the painting’s owner who might, in turn, feed Junior to his dogs. The problem for Junior is the film’s lead is a former child star who captivated viewers for many years before her talent faded and she turned to drugs and lost much of her earnings to lawyers and her interfering mother and jealous brother. Thistle Downing fits the bill as the type of person Junior normally helps. But the plot is complicated and puts Junior in a bind as to how to proceed and remain alive.

Saying Tim Hallinan is a master at plot, characterization and pitch-perfect dialogue is a serious understatement. In the hands of Hallinan’s talent, Junior’s character shines through, and you want him to find a way to make everything work out right. Thistle hasn’t had an easy life, but she’s got sass and spunk along with her drug dependence. Hallinan introduces a bevy of eclectic supporting cast members too, including Doc, a now-unlicensed physician whose personal mission is to help Thistle get clean and Trey Annunziato, a mob boss who is producing the film and many believe had her own father killed. Crashed combines serious issues and laugh-out-loud humor while remaining true to the mystery form. The plot contains enough twists to keep the reader guessing, and it’s a toss-up if you want to race to the end to see what happens or just savor the journey of getting there because you can only read a terrific book for the first time once.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 137 readers
PUBLISHER:	Hallinan Consulting, LLC (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Katherine Petersen
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tim Hallinan
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Nail Through the Heart The Fourth Estate Breathing Water Queen of Patpong A previous interview with Timothy Hallinan

Bibliography:

Poke Rafferty, Bangkok series:

• Nail Through the Heart (2007)
• The Fourth Watcher (2008)
• Breathing Water (2009)
• The Queen of Patpong (2010)
• The Fear Artist (2012)

Junior Bender, Burglar series:

• Crashed (2010)
• Little Elvises (2011)
• The Fame Thief (July 2013)

Simeon Grist, Los Angeles series:

• The Four Last Things (1989)
• Everything But the Squeal (1990)
• Skin Deep (1991)
• Incinerator (1992)
• The Bone Polisher (1993)
• The Man with No Time (1994)

“I let one of the men rename me. A man gave me the name Rose – you didn’t know that, did you, Poke?…He said, this man, he said that Kwan was too hard to remember, even though it’s a good name and it means ‘spirit,’ and that the rose was the queen of flowers and I was the queen of Patpong.” She laughs, rough as a cough. “The queen of Patpong. A kingdom of whores and viruses. Death with a smile.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (OCT 23, 2010)

The fourth in Hallinan’s involving Poke Rafferty Bangkok thriller series finds the American travel writer enjoying family life with new wife Rose and adopted daughter Miaow.

Miaow, a former street kid, now attends a multi-national private school where, determined to be like everybody else, she’s renamed herself Mia. Rose is Rose, tall, edgy, beautiful, happy in her newfound domesticity. Then a blast from her bargirl past turns up and in minutes there’s blood drawn and terror in their hearts.

James Horner, big, handsome and with private military skills, has a special grudge against Rose since she once tried to kill him. Rose isn’t saying much more than that, at least not until Rafferty has a couple more run-ins with Horner and his equally menacing sidekick. As a writer, Rafferty tends to meet brawn with brain, which is a lot of fun for the reader and still generates plenty of bloody action.

But with her family falling apart and another innocent girl hurt because she helped Rafferty, Rose decides to tell her story – which takes up the middle of the book.

Hallinan’s empathetic prose keeps this familiar story fresh – a bright, impoverished village girl, who runs away to escape being sold by her alcoholic father. We get a vivid picture of the gradations of bargirls – Kwan (Rose’s real name), more beautiful than most, has more choices. Hallinan takes us behind the scenes, giving us the girls’ point of view. Kwan’s story, full of pathos, friendship, and street-wise education, punctuated with occasional cruelty and common perils, builds to a crescendo of terror that makes it clear that Horner will stop at nothing to kill her. So Rafferty has to act, not just react.

With the help of his police friend and fellow Shakespeare aficionado, Arthit, Rafferty devises a plan. Trouble is Horner isn’t just big, he’s smart too, and much more ruthless than Rafferty. Hallinan meshes action, craftiness and the Bangkok streets to build to a white-knuckled and satisfying conclusion.

Hallinan knows his city, immersing us in Rafferty’s milieu of bar girls, school plays, cops and neighborliness. Miaow’s adolescent rebelliousness, her ardent and sometimes heartless desire to leave her streetwise past behind and be just like every other middleclass girl, and her endearing smarts all ring true.

Fans will be especially pleased to know more of Rose’s back-story, but first time readers will find themselves right at home in this exotic world.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 60 readers
PUBLISHER:	William Morrow (August 17, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tim Hallinan
EXTRAS:	Queen of Patpong video on YouTube
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Nail Through the Heart The Fourth Estate Breathing Water A previous interview with Timothy Hallinan New series: Crashed

Bibliography:

Poke Rafferty, Bangkok series:

• Nail Through the Heart (2007)
• The Fourth Watcher (2008)
• Breathing Water (2009)
• The Queen of Patpong (2010)
• The Fear Artist (July 2012)

Junior Bender, Burglar series:

• Crashed (2010)
• Little Elvises (2011)
• The Fame Thief (July 2013)

Simeon Grist, Los Angeles series:

• The Four Last Things (1989)
• Everything But the Squeal (1990)
• Skin Deep (1991)
• Incinerator (1992)
• The Bone Polisher (1993)
• The Man with No Time (1994)

“Hearing Miaow refer to herself as his daughter makes Rafferty smile, although he knows she won’t like his smile any more than she seems to like anything else these days.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (AUG 17, 2010)

Hallinan sets a breakneck pace in his third to feature American ex-pat and longtime Bangkok resident, Poke Rafferty. Married to Rose, a tall, confident Thai beauty, and adoptive father of Miaow, a precocious former street child, Rafferty gets involved in a poker sting while working on a book about crooks called Living Wrong.

But in addition to the marks, an extra player shows up, big, drunk and dangerous. Khun Pan, rich and ruthless, loses and takes it badly. Pan is the sort of man who grinds an expensive cigar out on a rare carpet just to flaunt his vulgar origins. To diffuse a violent outcome to the evening, Rafferty sets up one last bet and wins the right to write Pan’s biography, a heretofore forbidden project.

The next morning the project is plastered all over the morning papers and Rafferty soon gets two calls threatening his family. One insists that he drop the project; the other insists that he go on with it, using a list of sources best labeled “Pan’s enemies.”

Unfortunately, they both seem to have the clout and manpower to carry out their threats. His home is bugged, his family’s movements watched, he is followed and abducted at will from the street. On the defensive, reacting rather than acting, Rafferty knows he needs to gain control, to stop this scrabbling up a slippery slope in the dark.

First he visits Pan. Who lives in a marble mansion surrounded by two creation scenes – a theme park version of the Garden of Eden and a replica of the rickety farm village he came from, complete with pigsty, which has been allowed to ripen specially for the big charity bash he’s throwing.

Rafferty’s wife Rose is thrilled to be invited to the party. A child of rural poverty herself, she admires Pan – a man who came from nothing and hasn’t forgotten; whose good deeds are famous among the poor. She makes a mighty impression and leaves the party with an even higher opinion of Pan, hero of the downtrodden.

Then Rafferty begins digging into Pan’s past. A crime boss who rises into the upper echelons of the powerful doesn’t do it without help. What happened during the gap in Pan’s life – what’s the mystery that gave him disfiguring burns and set him on the path to legitimacy and political power?

He also begins exerting control on his surroundings, putting to work what he’s learned from the Thais about avoiding confrontations and showing a good face to the world. In all this he gets a lot of help – from Rose and Miaow (when she’s not acting like a brat), from his friend Arthit, a force to be reckoned with in the police and from Superman, the leader of a street gang of homeless urchins (reminiscent of the Baker Street Irregulars) – a crew that will be familiar to readers of the previous two books.

Suplots involving Arthit and his dying wife and Superman and a new street girl up from the country (like Pan and Rose), snared by a criminal gang and set out with a baby to beg, deepen the impact of a novel that offers complex characters and insight into Thai culture, Bangkok politics, human ruthlessness and the resourcefulness of those with nothing – some of them anyway.

Rafferty is a clever character with a flair for risk and a wry humor. His wife and daughter are equally appealing and the book crackles with wit, action and pulse-pounding suspense, strengthened by its emotional engagement.

Those who like John Burdett’s Bangkok novels will enjoy Hallinan’s as well – possibly more.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 35 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 17, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tim Hallinan
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Nail Through the Heart The Fourth Estate The Queen of Patpong New series: Crashed

Bibliography:

Poke Rafferty, Bangkok series:

• Nail Through the Heart (2007)
• The Fourth Watcher (2008)
• Breathing Water (2009)
• The Queen of Patpong (2010)
• The Fear Artist (July 2012)

Junior Bender, Burglar series:

• Crashed (2010)
• Little Elvises (2011)
• The Fame Thief (July 2013)

Simeon Grist, Los Angeles series:

• The Four Last Things (1989)
• Everything But the Squeal (1990)
• Skin Deep (1991)
• Incinerator (1992)
• The Bone Polisher (1993)
• The Man with No Time (1994)