Winner
of 2011 Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback
Bangkok—the
Year of the Monkey. Calvino’s Chinese New Year celebration is interrupted
by a call to Lumpini Park Lake, where Thai cops have just fished the
body of a farang cameraman. CNN is running dramatic footage
of several Burmese soldiers on the Thai border executing students.
Calvino
follows the trail of the dead man to a feature film crew where he hits
the wall of silence. On the other side of that wall, Calvino and Colonel
Pratt discover and elite film unit of old Asia hands with connections
to influential people in Southeast Asia. They find themselves matched
against a set of farangs conditioned for urban survival and
willing to go for a knock-out punch.
Praise
“In
Asia Hand, Moore delivers a gritty view of Bangkok, a city
of “contrasts” where “things that are never done happen just about every
day.”
—www.mysteryscenemag.com
“Fast
moving and hypnotic, this was a great read.”
—Crime
Spree Magazine
“In
Asia Hand, Christopher Moore builds the atmosphere, the ugliness,
brilliantly.... This ain’t pretty boy, touristy stuff that passes for
detective fiction.... The wash of human degradation threatens to drown
you.”
—Tarun Cherian, Deccan Herald (India)
“Moore’s
hard-boiled, noir plots and style place him hands-down as one of the
top current crime writers.”
—Tom McLaren, Gallup Journey
“Navigating
Bangkok’s dark sidestreets and myriad underground cultures requires
keen insight as well as the courage to look at corruption but see the
hope that lies beneath. Vincent Calvino, a disbarred American lawyer
turned PI, has been doing that for years as Christopher G. Moore shows
in his award-winning series.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine, Oline H. Cogdill
“Asia
Hand is the kind of novel that grabs you and never lets go.”
—The Times of Inda
“Asia
Hand is a skillfully crafted, addictive ride through one of the
planet's most raw and vivid cities. Moore and Calvino define the dark
pungent cocktail that is Asian noir.”
—Eliot Pattison, author of the “Inspector Shan”
series
“In
[Asia Hand], crime writer Christopher G. Moore does what
he does best: kill someone and let the brash, unsuave, unpretentious
Calvino unearth the dirty details. What follows is a journey into
the big, bad, dark world of Bangkok politics and double-dealings.
The stakes are high when luck forsakes the duo.”
—Hindustan Times
“Moore's
stylish second Bangkok thriller… explores the dark side of both Bangkok
and the human heart. Felicitous prose speeds the action along….”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Asia
Hand] highly recommended to readers of hard-boiled detective
fiction, as well as the classic American tough-guy authors (Raymond
Chandler or, more recently, Robert B. Parker).”
—Booklist
“A
well-crafted piece of modern noir fiction … well plotted, intricate
and intelligent … What makes [Asia Hand] work is Moore’s insights
into the interactions between ex-pats/foreigners (farangs)
in Thailand and the Thai people… [Moore’s Vincent Calvino] series is
great and beats the pants off of most crime fiction sitting on the shelves
of my local bookstore.”
—NancyO, www.2010theyearinbooks.com
“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