Timothy Hallinan Books

Eight years ago, Poke Rafferty, an American travel writer, and his Thai wife, Rose, adopted a Bangkok street child named Miaow, forming an unconventional intercultural family. That family has weathered extreme challenges—each of its three members carried the scars of a painful and dangerous history—but has stuck together with tenacity and love (and a little help from some friends). Now that family is in jeopardy: the birth of Poke and Rose’s newborn son has littered their small apartment with emotional land mines, forcing Poke to question his identity as a dad and Miaow to question her identity as a daughter. At the same time, the most cantankerous member of the small gang of Old Bangkok Hands who hang out at the Expat Bar suddenly goes missing under suspicious circumstances. Engaged in the search for the missing American, Poke is caught completely off-guard when someone he thought was gone forever resurfaces—and she has the power to tear the Raffertys apart.

The author of the Looking for Trouble travel book series, Poke Rafferty is ready to settle down in Bangkok with his fiancÉe, Rose, and his newly adopted daughter, Miaow. But trouble isn't ready to let him go; it's back in Poke's life with a vengeance, in the guise of his long-estranged father, Frank, the last person he ever wanted to see again. And Frank hasn't come empty-handed, arriving with a box of rubies, a wad of fraudulent identity papers, and one of the most dangerous gangsters in China in hot pursuit. With a rogue American Secret Service agent targeting Rose for her unwitting part in a North Korean counterfeiting operation, Poke can see trouble descending from everywhere to attack those he loves—and it will take every skill he possesses to keep them, and himself, alive.

Four of Dressler's former gangster associates have organized a national tour featuring once-popular rock bands from the 1960s and 1970s, hoping to relive past glories. However, the Rock of Ages tour is rife with tension, as long-standing feuds among bandmates, combined with drugs and erratic behavior, have led to health issues and legal troubles. Two near-fatal accidents raise suspicions of attempted murder, but Irwin Dressler’s primary concern is that someone close to him is using the tour as a cover to embezzle his money. As the tour arrives in LA, Junior has just one weekend to uncover the culprit, starting with his tires being slashed and threatening notes left on his car. The chaos escalates when a theatrical backdrop falls on a drummer during the disastrous first concert. Complicating matters, Junior is accompanied by his teenage daughter, Rina, who is increasingly curious about his criminal activities. With time running out, Junior must not only recover Dressler's money and prevent a potential murder but also steer Rina away from a life of crime, all while enduring the awful music surrounding him.

Poke Rafferty is happier than he's ever been. He's financially solvent, his family is about to grow larger, and his adopted Thai daughter, Miaow, seems to have settled in at junior high school. All that is endangered when Miaow and her boyfriend, Andrew, buy a stolen iPhone from a shady vendor and discover photographs of two dead police officers on it—disgraced officers, violently murdered to avenge the long-dead. Surrounding the murder investigation is a conspiracy that reaches the highest reaches of Bangkok law enforcement, and perhaps beyond. It soon becomes apparent that Miaow's discovery threatens the entire family—and if that's not enough, in order to survive, they may ultimately have to depend on someone who, in the past, has already betrayed them.

The two most difficult days in Bangkok writer Poke Rafferty's life begin with an emergency visit from Edward Dell, the almost-boyfriend of his teenage daughter, Maiow. The boy's father has disappeared, and money is being siphoned out of his bank and credit card accounts. It soon becomes apparent that he is in the hands of a pair of killers who prey on Bangkok's 'sexpats'; when the accounts are empty, he'll be found, like a dozen others, floating facedown in a Bangkok canal with a weighted cast on his unbroken leg. Unless Poke can find him first...

Back when Poke Rafferty first arrived in Bangkok to write a travel guide, some of the old-timers in the Expat Bar on Patpong Road helped him make sense of the city. Now these men—many of whom have been living in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War—have grown old and, in some cases, frail. When a talkative stranger named Arthur Varney turns up, they accept him without suspicion, failing to see that he’s actually using them to get to Poke. Varney wants two things: money Poke doesn’t have and a person Poke is unwilling to hand over. It becomes apparent quite quickly that there’s nothing Varney won’t do to secure his goals. As his actions threaten the foundation of Poke’s life in Thailand, the aging men of the Expat Bar discover that they might still be a force to reckon with.

Bangkok, třpytivé město duchů. Autor cestopisů Poke Rafferty se tam umí dostat do malérů. Umí to tak dobře, že se živí psaním průvodců pro mladé a nevyléčitelně znuděné cestovatele, kteří jsou posedlí vyhledáváním neobvyklých zážitků: Jenomže potom se zamiluje do Rose, tanečnice v jednom z místních vyhlášených barů, a zatouží žít jinak. Ujme se osmileté dívenky z ulice a rád by se probil džunglí thajských předpisů, aby ji do své nově budované rodiny mohl adoptovat. Dobré úmysly ale na sebe začnou nabalovat nebezpečné problémy a stahovat ho na temnou, neznámou půdu. Rafferty zjišťuje, že někteří lidé přechovávají děsivá tajemství, která jim na obličeji nejsou vždy vidět - a že on po celou dobu v Bangkoku jen klouzal po povrchu kultury, jíž vlastně vůbec nerozumí.

Poke Rafferty, americký autor cestopisů usazený v Bangkoku, už nechce vyhledávat další maléry v exotickém prostředí, aby měl o čem psát. Teď, kdy má poprvé v životě šanci vybudovat něco, co sám pořádně nepoznal - vlastní rodinu -, je dokonce ochoten vzdát se plánů na novou knihu s názvem Žít, jak se nemá a začít existovat jinak, méně nebezpečně. Jenže tak jako se špatně vystupuje z rozjetého rychlíku, je obtížné uniknout přízrakům minulosti. Ve stejnou dobu, kdy se ve městě objeví někdo, koho by tam Rafferty čekal ze všech nejmíň, obtěžkán bedýnkou s krvavými kambodžskými rubíny, najdou se v kanceláři jeho přítelkyně Rose igelitky plné falešných bankovek. Jenže smůla nechodí o samotě, a tak se rozjíždí spirála událostí, na jejímž konci bude Rafferty muset pečlivě volit, jak moc hrát vabank, aby neohrozil své blízké. Nebo spíš - aby je ještě někdy viděl živé.