Fools' River (A Poke Rafferty Novel)

Reposted from Reviewing the Evidence.with permission.

Tim Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series does three things very well: it offers readers original and twisty plots, it brings the city of Bangkok to vivid life, and it makes the ins and outs of family life as exciting as any thriller. These are not soap opera thrills, rather the ordinary dramas of navigating a marriage, watching a child become a teenager, and the suppressed anxiety of a pregnant woman who worries about a miscarriage. Plot, place, and characters are wrapped in a fourth quality: Hallinan writes beautifully. The eighth entry in the series is no exception.

Readers begin the story in a room with a man who doesn't know what time it is. He has fragments of memory: a nurse who wears show more a mask with a lipstick smile painted on it, the movement of the light through the blinds that tell him he's near water. But whatever it is that drips through his IV wipes his memory away and he can't scratch his itchy nose because he's cuffed to his bed.

Meanwhile, Rafferty's daughter brings a school friend to him with a problem. Edward's father has disappeared, and in the twelve days since he vanished someone has been draining his bank accounts. Rafferty has a reputation for solving problems the police can't or won't tackle. In this case, he needs to recruit a close friend, the disillusioned police officer Arthit, to figure out what's going on. The missing man is part of a pattern. If they don't find Edward's father in the next two days, his body is likely to turn up in a canal, one leg weighted with a cast, like a dozen other "sexpats" who moved to Thailand to enjoy a dissolute lifestyle.

Hallinan has explored the seamy side of Bangkok with an eye for hidden beauty and a great tenderness for people whose lives are shaped by its sex industry, including in this story a transgender Lao girl who wants badly to act on stage rather than play the sex-object role she's been assigned by poverty. In THE QUEEN OF PATPONG Hallinan evoked the life of a girl sent south by her impoverished family to become a dancer and a prostitute. THE HOT COUNTRIES features a group of expats who came for the excitement but are now facing old age and approaching death in lonely exile. Here, Hallinan manages to pull off a kind of magic: he makes us feel puzzled sympathy for a rich man who has neglected his son and wasted his fortune trying to fill his empty life, one that has only hours left before it's all over. It fills in yet another part of the Thai landscape and the lives of people drawn to the country for selfish reasons, hoping to fill a hole in themselves.

We can only hope this series, with its poetic exploration of human relationships in a fascinating setting, has a very long life ahead of it. It's one of the best out there. show less

Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series brings readers right into the heart of Bangkok to make them think and to make them feel. In this eighth book in the series, Hallinan tries some new things to tell his story of the effects of Bangkok's world-famous sex trade. Fools' River is told from several different points of view, and the action takes place within a two-day time frame. The limited time frame ratchets up the tension, and the multiple points of view bring depth and clarity to the story.

Through the narrative, readers come to know one of the murderers which adds a level of ambivalence. Normally killers do not rate mixed feelings in crime fiction, but one of Hallinan's aims in his writing has always seemed to be helping readers understand show more humans' complex emotions and behaviors. It's something he does extremely well. Fools' River not only has an exciting story to tell, it also shares insights into Poke's wife Rose and a new character, Lutanh, whom I really grew to care for.

This Poke Rafferty series is perfect for readers who enjoy strong storytelling, a strong sense of place, and moral complexity. Poke's world is not black and white; it is filled with shades of gray-- and the stories are all the stronger and more brilliantly colored for it. I'd no more forget to read a new Poke Rafferty mystery than I'd forget to put on my glasses first thing in the morning. show less