20. Timothy Hallinan, The Fear Artist (2012) (9/4/22)
I like Timothy Hallinan. He's a very good writer (though his publisher could have invested a little more in proofreading). I like his protagonist, Phillip "Poke" Rafferty, and other characters as well: Poke's Thai wife, Rose, and twelve-year-old adoptive daughter, Miaow (who in this volume play but a small role); his half-sister, Ming Li; his police officer friend Arthit. I like the setting of Bangkok, where Poke is ostensibly a travel writer, though all we ever see him do (this is the fifth in the series) is solve random crimes. I like a good murder mystery.
Which—this wasn't. The cover bills this book as a "thriller." The action begins with, yes, a murder—or perhaps more accurately, a hit—of an American man who mutters three words as he lies dying in Poke's arms, and stuffs a laundry slip in Poke's pocket. So "thriller" is, yes, more apropos than "mystery." The CIA is involved (tangentially). The war on terror also. Bad guys, definitely. In particular, one redheaded American bad guy named Murphy who did awful things during the Vietnam War. He is now trying to keep some old truths from coming to light.
At least, I think that's part of what was going on in this book. Maybe I read it too slowly, but in the end, the story arc eluded me a bit. There were a lot of riveting scenes, a lot of action, and in the end, justice prevailed. And yeah, money proved a strong motive (I think?) in the evil that was perpetrated. The story kept nodding at violence in southern Thailand, Muslim against Buddhist, which an author note says is still ongoing, sadly. But it all felt a bit abstract to me, within the context of this story, which takes place entirely in Bangkok. Like Hallinan thought up the villain, and a situation, then tried to mold those into a possible crime.
But still: by the last chapter Rose and Miaow are home again, and Miaow has a sweet boyfriend named Andrew, and Arthit will forgive Poke for lying to him, I fully trust . . . and I'm already looking to book #6.
Here's the only section I flagged (though if I'd had my flags handy, I might have flagged a couple of others, especially of dialogue: Hallinan does dialogue well). This one, though—it hits hard right now, ten years after this book was published:
Rafferty has always been fascinated by enormous power—power on an imperial scale—exercised in secret. He's spent much of his adult life traveling among the powerless, among people who generally are who they say they are and do what they say they'll do. People who have little and seem unwilling to become someone else in order to have more. In the past decade, this kind of behavior has become regarded by many as naive and even quaint, behavior that identifies people who haven't figured out the new rules.
Power in the dark seems to Rafferty to be the defining form of evil in the twenty-first century. It's evolved from an occasional governmental tactic into business as usual, as the world's rulers find goals in common—usually economic goals that benefit the rich and strengthen the rulers' hold on power—and pursue them jointly, turning out the lights on the contradictions between what they say and what they do.
Rafferty can remember, hazily, a time in which getting caught in a lie was a career-threatening crisis for a politician, at least in the countries that retain pretensions of democracy. Now there's a whole thesaurus of euphemisms for lying, and it's opened daily.
Yeah.
And I apologize again for posting a book report that is more mysterious than the actual story itself. I just don't want to give anything away. I guess I figure if I make the report unintelligible, you'll want to read the book? Anyway, I did enjoy this one. Mostly for the good writing (Hallinan is great at metaphor, description, dialogue) and the characterizations; maybe a little less for the plot per se. As a writer myself, though, I can identify. I suck at plot. But description? That's fun.
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