The Fear Artist

First Line: Two two-gallon cans of paint weigh about five times as much as he'd thought they would.

Rose and Miaow are out of town visiting relatives, and all Poke Rafferty has planned is getting the apartment painted while they're gone. But, like all best laid plans, everything goes downhill fast when Poke leaves the local hardware store with his paint.

There's noise, shouting, and a man barrels into Poke, sending them both down on the pavement. Holding the man in his arms, Poke realizes the man has been shot, and the stranger only has time to choke out three words before he dies: Helen Eckersley. Cheyenne. Within seconds the police arrive and deny that the man was shot. That same night, Poke is interrogated by Thai secret agents who show more insist on knowing what the dead man said, but he can't remember. When he is finally allowed to go home, he finds that the apartment has been ransacked. Not long after that, Poke knows that he's being followed.

The second time men in uniform show up at the door, Poke manages to give them the slip, and thus begins his life as a fugitive. It's not easy hiding from everyone who's looking for him, and as Poke tries to fly beneath the radar, he manages to gather bits and pieces of information and put them together. He's caught in the margins of the war on terror, and his opponent is a master artist whose medium is... fear.

I love Timothy Hallinan's books because he writes beautifully, with intelligence, and from the heart. As he said at the 2012 Poisoned Pen Conference held in Phoenix, Arizona, the mystery is important, but at the heart of any story-- first and foremost-- are the people. Hallinan's characters are some of the very best in crime fiction, and his fast-paced stories give an outsider's unforgettable view of Thailand and its people.

Poke Rafferty's life as a fugitive on the streets of Bangkok kept my pulse rate elevated. The people fighting the war on terror are deadly serious and seem to think nothing of employing any and all methods to obtain the information they want. As one character says in the book, "We're using bad people to fight bad people, and you do not want to be in the middle of that." Are Americans sometimes the bad guys in Timothy Hallinan's books? Yes. But so are Thais and people from many other countries.

Speaking of any and all methods leads me to one of the scariest villains I've met in a long time, the fear artist himself, "Red" Murphy, who's been operating his business since Vietnam, when he learned how the application of varying degrees of fear (and pain) will give him anything he desires. The more I learned about Murphy, the less I wanted Poke to meet him until I reached the point where I wanted my favorite writer in Thailand to put this monster out of business. Permanently. (And all the poor guy wanted to do was paint his apartment!)

That's what happens when you enter the world of Poke Rafferty and Timothy Hallinan. You fall in love with Thailand, and you're besieged by the rich tapestry of characters this very talented writer has created to people his landscape. Open the cover of one of his books, and you're not only investing your time, you're investing your mind and your heart. show less

You can read Tim Hallinan’s latest novel, “The Fear Artist”, as a standalone.
Can. But why are earth would you want to?
The other books in the Poke Rafferty series are such a delight that you’d have to be whacky not to read them. And, if you haven’t done so as yet, I daresay it’s only because you’ve never heard of Hallinan, or because you don’t like mysteries set anywhere else than in your own backyard.
Either way, in my opinion, you run a grave risk of selling yourself short.
But suppose you’re like me. Suppose you love “international” mysteries, and suppose you’ve been eagerly awaiting the next installment in this gripping, extraordinarily well-written series.
Is there anything about the book that might show more possibly disappoint you?
Well, yeah, actually there is.
If you’re anticipating another get-together with Poke’s wife, Rose, and his now-turned-troublesome teenage daughter Miaow, you’re going to have to put that pleasure aside for a while. At least until the next book.
They put in an occasional appearance in “The Fear Artist”, but they’re not really reunited with our hero until the very end.
Good thing, too, because while Rose and Miaow are out of rainy Bangkok, visiting her mother in Rose’s, remote “two buffalo” village, Poke is being pursued by Hallinan’s nastiest, most despicable villain yet.
Not that the author leaves him entirely without female, familial protection. In this one, Poke’s half-sister, Ming Li, is back – just the right person to help him through the difficult times – and that’s not only good for Rafferty, it’s also good for us, because, in Ming Li, Hallinan has created an absolutely delightful character.
I, for one, was delighted to see her put in another appearance.
“The Fear Artist” has deep roots, carrying us decades into the past, into the horrors of the war in Vietnam and the super-secret Phoenix Program – a plan to pacify the country by the indiscriminate torture and slaughter of people, often entirely innocent ones, who were suspected of being members of, or offering support to, the Viet Cong.
If you, like me, have a habit of reading before going to sleep, watch out for “The Fear Artist”. It’s like potato chips. You wind up promising yourself “just one more” – and, before you know it, you’ve finished them all. Chapters not chips.
Hallinan WILL keep you up until three AM. Fortunately, though, his novels don’t leave crumbs in your bed. show less

The only plans Poke Rafferty has is to paint the apartment while his wife and daughter are out of town. But, as so often happens, things don't go as planned. A man is shot outside the paint store and, as he falls, he grabs onto Poke. Before he dies, he whispers a name to Rafferty and slips a laundry ticket into his pocket. As upsetting as this is, Rafferty doesn't see that it has anything to do with him, that is, until the police start showing up and demanding to know what Poke knows which, unfortunately for Poke is nothing, since the police refuse to take nothing for an answer. Soon, Poke finds himself involved in an international incident where the good guys are a whole lot scarier than the bad guys and his only allies aren't exactly show more the trustworthy types.

The Fear Artist is the kind of book that keeps your attention from the first page to the last. The characters are well-drawn, the action is non-stop, and the writing is tight - what more can you ask from a thriller. But in case that isn't enough, it is set in Thailand - where the rain never stops and the bars are full of old spies just trying to relive their old glory days. show less

I like Poke Rafferty a lot but what keeps me coming back is Hallinan's talent for telling a story much larger than the whodunit. In his Acknowledgement section he said that it was a hard book to write. I believe it because it was a tough one to read. It's a good page turning read but the larger story is a sad one.

Maybe I'm getting jaded but I'm afraid this follows the usual plot lines, written like a summer action thriller movie. Hallinan writes well, but the bad guys are pure evil, and the good guys are invincible. There is lots of excitement but little mystery.

In the epilogue, the author refers the reader to the book "The Phoenix Program" by Douglas Valentine as a factual account. Critical reviews question that and refer to the more reliable "Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix" by Stuart Herrington, which sounds like it may be worth reading.

The narration is excellent (5-stars), which helps. I've only read two in the Poke Rafferty series, but I think I've got all there is to get.

I think Hallinan is a good writer but this wasn't that good of a book. The story went into doldrums where passing out bribes and laying low filled the pages before the eventual "high noon" with the bad guys. But I did finish it.

"The Fear Artist" is the fifth in Tim Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series about an American ex-pat living in Bangkok where adventure finds him. I read the first two books in the series then gave up on it because they were too similar. The third book, "The Queen of Patpong" received an Edgar nomination - I am surprised. I went back to the series because I was looking for a break from my usual crime fiction reading - my mistake. Hallinan is an American who spends his time in California and Asia. Like the others in this series I have read, this book features prostitutes with a heart of gold, lots of criticism of things American particularly in those areas that are so important to a person of high morals and values like Hallinan, er I mean show more Rafferty. A few examples - the American political process, we "...vote out the president and his gang of robbers and vote in some other idiot and a bigger gang of robbers". And do you know what America smells like? "fabric softener and frying fat, mixed together". That's not even cute, much less perceptive or funny. Finally, a colleague of our hero exclaims that "American pipple all baby". That's Russian for "The American people are all babies". Poke does not respond to this comment. And for me these asides were a drag on the story. What's the story about? Well, there's a bad guy (American, of course, and by the way this story does take place in Bangkok) and apparently he is tied to a My Lai type incident roughly 35 years ago) and he's doing very evil things once again, possibly under contract to - guess who? yes, America. This is a thriller that I found not very thrilling. I doubt I will come back to the series. show less