REVIEW: THE FEAR ARTIST
AUTHOR:
Timothy Hallinan (to be published by Soho Press July 2012)
American ex-pat Poke Rafferty is on a mission—to paint his
apartment—when he collides with a stranger on the sidewalk fronting the home
improvement store. Both men go down in an explosion of colors: Apricot Cream
for Rafferty’s wife Rose, and Urban Decay, a rotted eggplant-like hue for
Miao, their adopted teenaged daughter. The stranger dies on top of Rafferty,
but not before whispering the words, “Helen Eckersley” and “Cheyenne.”
This brief contact makes Rafferty the unwitting subject of
interest of the man for whom this novel is named. In trying to make sense of his
situation and stay alive, Rafferty must figure out who the hell the stranger
was and what the hell he was trying to tell him with those three cryptic words.
Meanwhile, Rose and Miao are staying with relatives in a
village, far from danger and Bangkok, where it’s pouring freaking buckets. So, the
river’s rising. And really bad people are coming after Rafferty, with orders to terminate him with extreme prejudice. So he's lonely
and on the run. And it totally sucks ass. But Rafferty kicks ass, too, when he
has to.
Then, of all things, his sister shows up. Well, his
half-sister, really. Whatever. She’s awesome, because she can spy with the best
of them. And she loves her half-brother, and he loves her. But he’s living in
taxis, running from hotel to hotel, trying to evade crooked cops, even though
his friend Arthit, the only honest cop in Bangkok—have I mentioned him?—is
doing his best to help him out.
So, Poke is like, “Ooooh, it’s so great to see you,
half-sister! What the hell are you doing here?”
Tim Hallinan’s writing perfectly captures the political
intrigue, as well as the social order that rules the streets of Bangkok.
Rafferty has the additional complication of having old family connections, as
well as a new family to protect. Thus, THE FEAR ARTIST not only takes the
reader for a wild ride through the squalor of Bangkok, but it does so with great
poignancy.
In THE FEAR ARTIST, Poke Rafferty takes a trip into the
heart of darkness to find Colonel Kurtz very much alive. With a daughter. And
that’s so not cool. Plus,
who’ll stop the rain? Get it? :)
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