Timothy Hallinan

I know all good things must come to an end, but there are still times that I'd dearly love to postpone an ending or two. This last book in Timothy Hallinan's superb Poke Rafferty series is one of those times. From Poke sleeping on a lumpy couch to the overload of estrogen caused by all of Rose's friends gathering around her to Miaow's concern over her place in the family now that the baby is here, I felt like a member of the family, too.

All along, Hallinan has told us that this series really show more isn't about Poke; it's all about Miaow and how a small child living on the streets of Bangkok becomes an integral part of Poke's unconventional intercultural family. It's been eight years since Poke and Rose adopted Miaow, and she's grown into a phenomenal young woman. What better way to shed more light on her than to give readers a look into the part of Miaow's story that we've never heard?

Street Music can make you think. It can make you laugh. It can make you cry. I only wish Miaow would become a private investigator or something so we could continue to watch her grow as a person (and see Poke, Rose, and the baby as well). It is a fitting ending to a marvelous series. If you haven't read any of these books, you have to do something about that as soon as possible. Get your hands on A Nail Through the Heart and enjoy yourself all the way through Street Music. You can thank me later. show less

First Line: If I'd liked expressionism, I might have been okay.

If you're in the mood for a mystery that's just plain fun, this is the one for you. Junior Bender lives in a series of specially selected Los Angeles area motels. You see, when you're a burglar you don't always want everyone knowing where you live. Junior has a magic touch, too. He started breaking into houses when he was fourteen, and he has yet to be caught. He burgles a couple of places a month, his child support is paid, and show more he's good to go. He's a man of few needs is our Junior.

But things begin heading south for him when he's set up during his latest heist. Now he's being blackmailed by one of the most powerful crime bosses in LA into acting as a private investigator on the set of the boss's latest porn movie venture.

Someone keeps sabotaging the movie, and the boss wants Junior to get to the bottom of it. When Junior finds out the identity of the star, he's positive the former sweetheart of American sitcoms figures into the solution somehow. He also knows that he simply cannot let young Thistle Downing star in those films, no matter how far from grace she's fallen. Doing the right thing is going to put Junior on the wrong side of LA's scariest mob boss, so this is going to take some very careful planning. Is Junior going to be able to pull it off?

Timothy Hallinan knows how to write a smart aleck main character who has his own set of morals and a heart of gold. (In many ways Junior Bender reminds me of Hallinan's Poke Rafferty, although Poke doesn't have the necessary experience of having a career on the wrong side of the law.) Junior is more moral than most people one meets in Los Angeles, and almost everything he does is done with the thought of "What will my teenage daughter think of what I'm doing?" in his mind. As a father, he cannot in all good conscience let the young woman, Thistle Downing, act in a porno movie-- and as a man he can't let it happen either. If you've got your nose stuck in the air because Junior earns his living as a thief, you need to bring it back down again because this man does more good than most of us-- and he can do it in such a way that makes us laugh or at least smile.

We get to know Junior by bits and pieces as the story progresses, and both character and plot are fascinating. The rest of the cast-- including an ex-getaway driver and two little girls who know how to lose a tail-- is stellar, and don't be surprised if you find yourself exclaiming, flinching, or otherwise making noticeable reactions to Hallinan's story as it races along.

Yes, sometimes I'm in the mood for a book that's just plain fun. In the instance of Crashed, I was very fortunate indeed. Not only is this book fun, it's extremely well-crafted and insightful. Next up in the Junior Bender series is Little Elvises, and I've managed to snag a copy. Lucky, lucky me! show less

With the publication of The Hot Countries in October 2015, Timothy Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series will be seven books long. The Queen of Patpong, which is the fourth Rafferty book, is one that I particularly like because it fills in Rose’s backstory so completely that it is easy to see how she became the strong woman that she is today.

Rose, a former Thai bar girl, by this point in the series is married to Poke and they are living rather comfortably and happily with Miaow, the little show more homeless girl they plucked off the streets and adopted as their own. As the book begins, Poke, who originally came to Thailand to write travel books, is already aware of much of Rose’s past but even he does not know how truly horrific her story is.

All of that suddenly changes, though, when a man Rose thought (and prayed) was long dead stops by her restaurant table to pay his compliments. Before that conversation ends, Rose has stabbed the man in the hand, Poke has been manhandled and humiliated, and the whole restaurant is in an uproar. But that’s only a taste of what the intruder has in mind for Rose, Poke, and Miaow. He has big plans for the family, and if he succeeds in carrying out those plans none of them will be around to talk about it when he’s all done.

Poke’s search for Horner (Rose’s nemesis) will take him to Patpong Road, the very heart of one of the most wide-open red-light districts in the world. This is a section of Bangkok both he and Rose know well. Rose, like so many young Thai women before her, escaped the dangers of life in her home village by signing on to work in one of the infamous bars in the district. And despite not having a real comprehension of the lifestyle she was signing on for, the statuesque Rose was such an eye catcher that, by the time she left the life, she could legitimately be called “The Queen of Patpong.”

Rose Rafferty’s story is typical of those of the thousands of young Asian women who get trapped in Thailand’s sex trade every year, and make no mistake about it, this industry is both as well organized and as corrupt as any crime syndicate in the world. Timothy Hallinan has done his research, and what he describes here is both fascinating and disturbing. Sadly, because it is sometimes the only means of escape from an even worse fate planned for them by their own families, there is no shortage of young women willing to try their luck on Patpong Road.

The Queen of Patpong, however, is much more than a primer on Thailand’s sex trade. It is also a very fine thriller about three or four characters readers have come to know – and love – over the length of the series. And I have to tell you…the ending of The Queen of Patpong is one of the most satisfying of its type I have experienced in a long, long time. show less

A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART, the first of Timothy Hallinan’s Bangkok thrillers, balances family, love, loyalty, and hope against evil that destroys the spirit and sacrifices innocence to perversion.

I read A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART a few years ago. Tim’s post, “Behind the Smiles”, on the Murder is Everywhere blog, sent me back to the book and I am glad it did. I found things I missed in the first reading and I understand some things better because of what I have learned about Thailand show more through Tim’s posts.

In the blog, Tim writes that Bangkok is the “meat market where the children of the poor, both male and female, go to sell their beauty.” The men who use them believe “there has to be something real, something genuine, behind smiles like those. And there are: poverty and powerlessness.”

A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART is about family, love, loyalty, hope, and the future but it is also about the debasement of the most innocent of humanity and the evil which kills beauty because there is no need for beauty when power is all that matters. Poke’s search for a missing man and his maid leads him to Madame Wing who offers Poke the money he needs to speed along adoption process that will make Miaow, and 8 year-old street child, legally his. The money will help his love, Rose, establish her business. Madame Wing wants Poke to find an envelope but he must not look at the contents. One man did and had to die for doing so. The threads come together in the end to a satisfying, almost, conclusion.

This is a book that the reader won’t want to put down. Since I first read it, I have thought, on occasion, of “Growing-Younger Man”, the man whose face is so tight Poke wonders how he chews. Why do people try so hard to pretend that they haven’t experienced life? Why is youth so envied when it is the young who haven’t yet had the time to develop the life-skills that allow us to keep living?

But that is a minor issue compared to what the author is really serving up. Child pornography is financed by the people who buy it. Anyone who does is as guilty as the men who perform the abuse. They do it for the world wide audience who know without question that what they are seeing on the screen isn’t pretend. And then there is the ultimate question: When is the taking of a life not a wrong? Are all murderers equally guilty? How should society respond when, as Poke says, “The victims were guilty….and the murderers were innocent?”

Finally, the book reminded me that I haven’t told my children enough about the killing fields of Cambodia. As the victims of the holocaust should never be forgotten, neither should the victims of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. We have an obligation to them as well. show less