The Fear Artist

Starred review from May 14, 2012
At the start of Edgar-finalist Hallinan’s heartrending, unforgettable fifth Poke Rafferty thriller (after 2010’s The Queen of Patpong), travel writer Rafferty collides with an overweight man around 65, possibly a German or American, on a wet Bangkok street. The man, whose head is oddly sunburned, manages to say a woman’s name before expiring from multiple gunshots. When the cops at the scene insist the man wasn’t shot, Rafferty knows he’s headed for trouble. Forced to betray his best friend, Rafferty turns for help to leftover cold war spooks from the other side as he uncovers evidence that the Pentagon has resurrected the Phoenix Program, which the U.S. used in Vietnam, to counter Muslim terrorists in southern Thailand. Hallinan gives his readers, who should be prepared for gruesome torture scenes, no chance to escape from his somber conviction that what America has become by pursuing the war on terror was never what America was supposed to be. Agent: Bob Mecoy, Bob Mecoy Literary Agency.

July 15, 2012
A dead man who crumples onto his lap pulls travel writer Poke Rafferty once more down into Bangkok's dank underbelly. In an uncharacteristic burst of domestic energy, Rafferty is just emerging from a store, lugging cans of paint destined for the walls of the apartment he shares with his wife, Rose, and their adopted daughter, Miaow, when he collides first with a crowd of pedestrians streaming down the road, then with an American gent who collapses on top of him, recovers just enough to say, "Helen Eckersley. Cheyenne," and dies. Police deny that the American was shot, ascribe the copious blood on the scene to a nosebleed, and take Rafferty in. Questioned by the distinctly hostile Maj. Shen, Rafferty inconveniently forgets the name the dying American was at such pains to get out. It's a costly gap in his story, one that brings down the wrath of Shen and sends police to ransack his place and frame him for the murder of a stranger whose name he still doesn't know. Forced to send Rose and Miaow into hiding and to go on the run himself in the city he's made his home, Rafferty gets help from his friends Arthit, a recently widowed police officer, and Dr. Ratt, who hides him from official scrutiny in a truly ingenious way. But in order to get the goods on Haskell Murphy, the ex-soldier he's convinced is behind the murder, Rafferty will have to deal with the world's most untrustworthy trio of spies, delve into a particularly ugly chapter in the Vietnam War and take some hellacious chances with his personal safety. As usual (The Queen of Patpong, 2010, etc.), the real star of the show is the hero's hometown. As Rafferty observes, "Bangkok may not be glamorous...but it's got lurid down cold."

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Starred review from July 1, 2012

Poke Rafferty's ordinary day is upended when he crosses paths with a man fleeing Bangkok police. Billie Joe Sellers, a Vietnam vet, is shot dead, falls on Poke, and utters three fateful final words. Now Poke is being hunted down for murky reasons, not least that a lot of people want to know what Sellers said to him. It seems the post-9/11 war on terrorism has resurrected some real-life demons from the Vietnam War-era covert Phoenix Program, including ruthless former Phoenix member Red Murphy, who plans to launch fresh violence on Thailand soon. Poke strikes up an alliance with Ming Li (his half-sister) and some slapdash spies from the old days, and the game is on. VERDICT Hallinan's storytelling abilities have gotten stronger. This stellar fifth series entry (after The Queen of Patpong) demonstrates that. I would stop and re-read sections because he makes the whole scenario so vividly clear. Similarly, I admire his book's structure and careful plotting. A good readalike might be Randall Peffer for his Vietnam War themes and Southeast Asian settings.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2012
All I wanted to do was paint my apartment, thinks Poke Rafferty after more than a week of evading capture by Bangkok's secret police. He has become a suspect in the War on Terror, hunted by police, who are concerned that Muslims have killed thousands of Buddhists in southern Thailand, and by an aging American whose appetite for torture and murder wasn't sated by the Vietnam War's Phoenix Program. Set against actual strife in the south and the epochal 2011 monsoon that nearly drowned all of Bangkok, Hallinan's latest surpasses his last Rafferty thriller, the Edgar-nominated The Queen of Patpong (2010). The plot is straightforward until Poke learns that Murphy, the American, is a monster who killed women and children as easily as Vietcong agents. But it becomes more complex when he hires two former Russian spies to help him and reluctantly accepts assistance from his 17-year-old half-sister, Ming Li. The Russians' first loyalty may be to money, and Poke wishes that Ming Li were safely home in Virginia. All of Hallinan's characters are multifaceted and compelling, but his villains are exceptional; and the volcanic American sadist is the author's best yet. Poke's ongoing melancholy over his daughter's adolescent angst remains knowing, and here it serves as a reader's respite from the book's myriad tensions. The Fear Artist is simply the best of a fine series of thrillers set in one of the world's most exotic locales.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)