“About the reward money,” said Colonel Pratt, putting the cup back on the saucer.
“A decision has been made?” Calvino held his breath. “Anyone we know on the list?”
“Nui.”
“The engineer with the Harvard degree?”
“Washington loves the fact she’s an American-educated young woman. Bright, articulate and ready to go on camera. She’s in New York being interviewed on network TV.”
“They’ll get two hundred million bucks’ worth of publicity.”
“Five million isn’t enough.” Colonel Pratt reached across the table and grabbed Calvino’s shoulder.
“There will be a price on her head.”
“Did I ever tell you she tried to take my gun?”
“You were the one who said she should get the reward money.”
“But not the whole fucking five mil.”
“Let me buy you another coffee,” said Colonel Pratt. “Yeah, thanks, that will make my day.”
Later, after returning to his office, as hard as he tried, Calvino couldn’t concentrate on his work. It was an insurance fraud case. The insurer thought the deceased hadn’t really died but had faked his death with the help of his wife. He shook his head. Inside the rim of real unresolved deaths was a parallel universe of fake deaths for insurance money. He walked along Sukhumvit Road and heard someone calling his name.
It was Ed McPhail, “Hey, buddy, I saw that Thai engineer friend of yours scored the big five million. I thought you had something to do with that case. Wasn’t this supposed to be your big year for dough?”
“The government didn’t see it that way.”
“I saw her picture. She looks like that singer Vanessa May. And you let her get away? Are you crazy?”
Calvino sighed, dropped his chin.
“Barking-dog crazy,” he said.
“It gets better. CNN said she was getting her own reality TV show. Finding Them. Contestants are ordinary people who get a set of blueprints and have twenty-four hours to locate the terrorists’ cell. They’re armed with paint guns. Meanwhile, terrorists setup ambushes and try to whack the contestants. It sounds like the kind of crazy concept that appeals to most married couch potatoes.”
“Think how making her a hero plays in the Middle East. Like Colonel Pratt said, she’s a natural. A tiny Thai woman takes out a group of JI professionals planning to blow up an entire city.”
McPhail leaned back, letting the smoke curl out of his nose. His eyes were half closed, and slowly he opened them wide and stared at Calvino.
“Fuck it. When does the ordinary guy ever get a chance? There’s always some guy at the top of the heap. He’s got the most brains, is hung like a stallion, and he’s totally fit, hand- some, young, together, passionate and loveable. There’s got to be one guy like that. Who is he? Where does he live?”
“He never goes out. He doesn’t have to leave his apartment,” said Calvino.
“What does he do about lining up women? Nothing. He’s got a system of perpetual home delivery. Tag-teams line up outside his door like pizza delivery workers, waiting for their turn to jump into his bed. He’s God. He doesn’t have to pay. yings are free for him. They never think he’s wrong or stupid or fat or old. He’s God, and God is always right, clever, slender and young. He’s the man.”
“Or the woman.”
“Hey, she stole that reward money; that’s a pissing shame.”
“She deserved it.”
McPhail shook his head.
“There’s got to be one guy who has it all.”
“Valentine comes close.”
“I know about that guy. He’s a nut. Forget him. He’s not even on the long list.”
“See you around, McPhail.”
“Take care of yourself, Bud.”
ABOUT AUTHOR
Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian writer who once taught law at the University of British Columbia. After his first book His Lordship' Arsenal was published in New York to a critical acclaim in 1985, Moore became a full-time writer and has so far written 23 novels and one collection of interlocked short stories.
Moore is best known by his international award-winning Vincent Calvino Private Eye series and his cult classics Land of Smiles Trilogy, a behind-the-smiles study of his adopted country, Thailand. His novels have been translated into eleven languages. His Vincent Calvino novels are published in the United States by Atlantic Monthly Press and in Great Britain and the Commonwealth by Atlantic Books.
He lives with his wife in Bangkok. For more information about the author and his work, visit his official website: www.cgmoore.com. He also blogs regularly with other cirme authors at www.internationalcrimeauthors.com
THE VINCENT CALVINO P.I. SERIES
CHRISTOPHER G. MOORE’s Vincent Calvino P.I. series began with Spirit House in 1992. The latest, eleventh, in the series is The Corruptionist first released in Thailand in 2010
Moore’s protagonist, Vincent Calvino is an Italian-Jewish former lawyer from New York who left his practice to turn P.I. in Southeast Asia. Calvino’s assignments take him inside the labyrinth of local politics, double-dealing and fleeting relationships. Unlike typical tough-guy sleuths, Calvino admits he would never survive without his guardian angel, his Shakespeare-quoting and saxophone-plaYing buddy, Colonel Pratt, an honest and well-connected Thai cop who helps him find hidden forces, secret traps and ways to keep him alive in a foreign land.
The twelves novels in the Vincent Calvino P.I. series are: Spirit House, Asia Hand, Zero Hour in Phnom Penh, Comfort Zone, The Big Weird, Cold Hit, Minor Wife, Pattaya 24/7, The Risk of Infidelity Index, PaYing Back Jack The Corruptionist, and 9 Gold Bullets. The novels are published in Thailand by Heaven Lake Press, in the United States by Grove/Atlantic and in Great Britain by Atlantic Books.
The third installment in the series Zero Hour in Phnom Penh won the German Critics Award for Crime Fiction (Deutscher Krimi Preis) for best international crime fiction in 2004 and the Premier Special Director’s Award Semana Negra (Spain) in 2007 or the author’s website: www.cgmoore.com.
SPIRIT HOUSE
First in the series
The Bangkok police already have a confession by a nineteen-year-old drug addict who has admitted to the murder of a British computer wizard, Ben Hoadly. From the bruises on his face shown at the press conference, it is clear that the young suspect had some help from the police in the making of his confession. The case is wrapped up. Only there are some loose ends that the police and just about everyone else are happy to overlook.
The search for the killer of Ben Hoadley plunges Calvino into the dark side of Bangkok, where professional hit men have orders to stop him. From the world of thinner addicts, dope dealers, fortunetellers, and high-class call girls, Calvino peels away the mystery surrounding the death of the English ex-public schoolboy who had a lot of dubious friends.
“Well-written, tough and bloody.”
—Bernard Knight, Tangled Web (UK)
“A worthy example of a serial character, Vincent Calvino is human and convincing. [He] is an incarnate of the composite of the many expatriate characters who have burned the bridge to their pasts.”
—Thriller Magazine (Italy)
“A thinking man’s Philip Marlowe, Calvino is a cynic on the surface but a romantic at heart. Calvino ... found himself in Bangkok—the end of the world for a whole host of bizarre foreigners unwilling, unable, or uninterested in going home.”
—The Daily Yomiuri
ASIA HAND
Second in the series
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.
“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 focusing on the Land of Smiles, Canadian Christopher G. Moore clearly has a first-hand understanding of the expat milieu ... Moore is perspicacious.”
—Bangkok Post
ZERO HOUR IN PHNOM PENH
Third in the series
Winner of 2004 German Critics Award for Crime Fiction (Deutscher Krimi Preis) for best international crime fiction and 2007 Premier Special Director’s Award Semana Negra (Spain)
In the early 1990s, at the end of Cambodia’s devastating civil war, UN peacekeeping forces try to keep the lid on the violence. Gunfire can still be heard nightly in Phnom Penh, where Vietnamese prostitutes try to hook UN peacekeepers from the balcony of the Lido Bar.
Calvino traces leads on a missing farang from Bangkok to war-torn Cambodia, through the Russian market, hospitals, nightclubs, news briefings, and UNTAC headquarters. Calvino’s buddy, Colonel Pratt, knows something that Calvino does not: The missing man is connected with the jewels stolen from the Saudi royal family. Calvino quickly finds out that he is not the only one looking for the missing farang.
“Political, courageous and perhaps Moore’s most important work.”
—CrimiCouch.de
“Fast-paced and entertaining. Even outside of his Bangkok comfort zone, Moore shows he is one of the best chroniclers of the expat diaspora.”
—The Daily Yomiuri
“A brilliant detective story that portrays—with no illusion—Cambodia’s adventurous transition from genocide and civil war to a free-market economy and democratic normality. A rare stroke of luck and a work of art.”
—Deutsche Well Buchtipp, Bonn
COMFORT ZONE
Fourth in the series
Twenty years after the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnam is opening to the outside world. There is a smell of fast money in the air and poverty in the streets. Business is booming and in austere Ho Chi Minh City a new generation of foreigners have arrived to make money and not war. Against the backdrop of Vietnam’s economic miracle, Comfort Zone reveals a divided people still not reconciled with their past and unsure of their future.
Calvino is hired by an ex-special forces vet, whose younger brother uncovers corruption and fraud in the emerging business world in which his clients are dealing. But before Calvino even leaves Bangkok, there have already been two murders, one in Saigon and one in Bangkok
“Moore hits home with more of everything in Comfort Zone. There is a balanced mix of story-line, narrative, wisdom, knowledge as well as love, sex, and murder.”
—Thailand Times
“Like a Japanese gardener who captures the land and the sky and recreates it in the backyard, Moore’s genius is in portraYing the Southeast Asian heartscape behind the tourist industry hotel gloss.
—The Daily Yomiuri
“In Comfort Zone, our Bangkok-based P.I. digs, discovering layers of intrigue. He’s stalked by hired killers and falls in love with a Hanoi girl. Can he trust her? The reader is hooked.”
—NTUC Lifestyle (Singapore)
THE BIG WEIRD
Fifth in the series
A beautiful American blond is found dead with a large bullet hole in her head in the house of her ex-boyfriend. A famous Hollywood screenwriter hires Calvino to investigate her death. Everyone except Calvino’s client believes Samantha McNeal has committed suicide.
In the early days of the Internet, Sam ran with a young and wild expat crowd in Bangkok. As Calvino slides into a world where people are dead serious about sex, money and fame, he unearths a hedonistic community where the ritual of death is the ultimate high.
“An excellent read, charming, amusing, insightful, complex, localised yet startlingly universal in its themes.”
—Guide of Bangkok
“Highly entertaining.”
—Bangkok Post
“Like a noisy, late-night Thai restaurant, Moore serves up tongue-burning spices that swallow up the literature of Generation X and Cyberspace as if they were merely sticky rice.”
—The Daily Yomiuri
“A good read, fast-paced and laced with so many of the locales so familiar to the expat denizens of Bangkok.”
—Art of Living (Thailand)
COLD HIT
Sixth in the series
Five foreigners have died in Bangkok. Were they drug overdose victims or victims of a serial killer? Calvino believes the evidence points to a serial killer who stalks tourists in Bangkok. The Thai police, including Colonel Pratt, don’t buy his theory.
Calvino teams up with an LAPD officer on a bodyguard assignment. Hidden forces pull them through swank shopping malls, run-down hotels, the Klong Toey slum, and bars in the red light district as they try to keep their man and themselves alive. As Calvino learns more about the bodies being shipped back to America, the secret of the serial killer is revealed.
“The story is plausible and riveting to the end.”
—The Japan Times
“Tight, intricate plotting, wickedly astute ... Cold Hit will have you variously gasping, chuckling, nodding, tut-tutting, oh-yesing, and grinding your teeth throughout its 330 pages.”
—Guide of Bangkok
“City jungle, sex, drugs, power, but also good-hearted people: a complete crime.”
—Zwanzig Minuten Zürich
“Calvino is a wonderful private detective figure! Consistent action, masterful language ... and Anglo-Saxon humour at its best.”
—Lutz Bunk, DeutschlandRadio, Berlin
MINOR WIFE
Seventh in the series
A contemporary murder set in Bangkok—a neighbor and friend, a young ex-hooker turned artist, is found dead by an American millionaire’s minor wife. Her rich expat husband hires Calvino to investigate.
While searching for the killer in exclusive clubs and not-so-exclusive bars of Bangkok, Calvino discovers that a minor wife—mia noi—has everything to do with a woman’s status. From illegal cock fighting matches to elite Bangkok golf clubs, Calvino finds himself caught in the crossfire as he closes in on the murderer.
“What distinguishes Christopher G. Moore from other foreign authors setting their stories in the Land of Smiles is how much more he understands its mystique, the psyche of its populace and the futility of its round residents trYing to fit into its square holes.”
—Bangkok Post
“Moore pursues in even greater detail in Minor Wife the changing social roles of Thai women (changing, but not always quickly or for the better) and their relations among themselves and across class lines and other barriers.”
—Vancouver Sun
“The thriller moves in those convoluted circles within which Thai life and society takes place. Moore’s knowledge of these gives insights into many aspects of the cultural mores. Many of these are unknown to the expat population. ... Great writing, great story and a great read.”
—Pattaya Mail
PATTAYA 24/7
Eighth in the series
Inside a secluded, lush estate located on the edge of Pattaya, an eccentric Englishman’s gardener is found hanged. Calvino has been hired to investigate. He finds himself pulled deep into the shadows of the war against drugs, into the empire of a local warlord with the trail leading to a terrorist who has caused Code Orange alerts to flash across the screen of American intelligence.
In a story packed with twists and turns, Calvino traces the links from the gardener’s past to the doors of men with power and influence who have everything to lose if the mystery of the gardener’s death is solved.
“Calvino does it again ... well-developed characters, and the pace keeps you reading well after you should have
turned out the light.”
—Farang Magazine (Thailand)
“A compelling, atmospheric and multi-layered murder investigation set in modern-day Thailand. The detective, Calvino, is a complex and engaging hero.”
—Garry Disher, award-winning author of The Wyatt Novels
“We enjoy the spicy taste of hard-boiled fiction reinvented in an exotic but realistic place—in fact, not realistic, but real!”
—Thriller Magazine (Italy)
“A cast of memorably eccentric figures in an exotic Southeast Asian backdrop”
—The Japan Times
THE RISK OF INFIDELITY INDEX
Ninth in the series
Major political demonstrations are rocking Bangkok. Chaos and fear sweep through the Thai and expatriate communities. Calvino steps into the political firestorm as he investigates a drug piracy operation. The piracy is traced to a powerful business interest protected by important political connections. A nineteen-year-old Thai woman and a middle-aged lawyer end up dead on the same evening. Both are connected to Calvino’s investigation.
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