Tangled Web UK Review July 2008
Spirit House: A Vincent Calvino Crime Novel by
Christopher G Moore
pbk out July 08
(Atlantic Books)
at £6.99
A ‘hard-boiled’ private eye story, written by a Canadian about Bangkok, but obviously meant for the US market.
Well-written, tough and bloody, it concerns Vincent Calvino, a former New York lawyer who was framed into disgrace many years before and who moved to Thailand to set up as solitary private investigator. His problem in NY was linked to that of a Thai police officer studying there and they have since become great friends, to Vincent’s advantage as his pal has become a colonel in the Thai police and is able to help and protect Calvino.
The whole tale is located in the sleazier parts of the city and mostly concerns low bars, brothels and whores, into which a plot relating to drug-smuggling by factions in the Burmese army forms a menacing background. Murders, ambushes, mutilations and assorted mayhem are commonplace, but the standard of writing assures the reader of a gripping story. The descriptions of the more sordid side of Bangkok are very graphic and though it was a pretty awful place when I was there fifty years ago, it seems to have gone downhill even more! The author gives a lot of time to the farangs, the rather contemptuous Thai word for expatriates, many of whom seem aimless drunks and perverts wasting away their existence in the bars there, but why any Westerner would want to live in such a place is a mystery in itself.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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