Christopher G. Moore
Asia Hand
Second in the Vincent Calvino P.I. Series
$15.95

Bangkok - the Year of the Monkey. Private investigator Vincent ("Vinee") Calvino's New Year celebration ends when Jerry Hutton, wearing a necklace of wooden penises, is pulled dead from Lumpini Park Lake. Cable TV shows dramatic footage of several Burmese soldiers on the Thai border executing students in cold blood. Hutton was the cameraman.

Calvino probes the truth behind Hutton's job with an LA film production company in Bangkok. They are shooting a feature titled Lucky Charms. When Calvino confronts the director about Hutton's role in the production he hits a wall of silence.

On the other side of that wall, Calvino and Lt. Col. Pratt discover an elite film unit of old Asia Hands with important Bangkok connections. They find themselves matched against a set of farangs conditioned for urban survival and willing to go for a knock-out punch.

First edition (1992) / Current edition (2000) Heaven Lake Press, 277 pp.

 

“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