Timothy Hallinan
Timothy
Hallinan, to all of us who have come to know him through his
generous and friendly use of social
media, has completed the seventh volume in his Poke
Rafferty series of thrillers, with The Hot Countries
due out in early October. I've just completed reading The
Queen of Patpong, fourth in
the series, as well as Breathing
Water, which proceeded it.
I think it's probably time for me to take a look at Hallinan's
writing, with particular emphasis on the Poke
series. Several month ago I decided I wanted to read all the volumes
in the two series Hallinan is currently writing, so I tapped several
sources to come up with a full set of them, drawing on electronic,
and used book sources. More recently, I've headed backwards to buy
the Simeon Grist
series, published in the last century and abandoned, according to
Tim, because of monumental absence of reader interest in them. The
Grist series is described now as cult classics. They should start
arriving shortly, and I expect to read and review them during the
next year or so.
Hallinan, who now
spends about half of each year in Southern California and the other
half between residences in Bangkok and Phnom Penh, in Cambodia, is
currently the author of two successful crime novel series. In the
Junior Bender
series, his main character is a thief by profession who, because of
his intelligence, honesty, and reliability serves to solve mysteries
for other people living on the wrong side of the law. The fifth
volume of this series, begun in 2012, will be announced fairly
shortly. Junior Bender stories stand out because of their combination
of humor and suspense. They present a nice change of pace in crime
fiction.
The
Poke Rafferty series has all been published since 2009, beginning
with A
Nail Through the Heart.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Tim had a successful career in
the film industry and as consultant as well as developing web sites
for businesses. When not writing his books, he maintains an active
web site and
social
media presence. One very interesting part of his web site is a
section called “Finish
Your Novel,” written for those who begin writing a novel, but
somehow are never able to finish it, which is what happens to about
98% of all novels begun. In a lengthy series of entries, Tim talks
directly to writers, offering significant help with the writing
process. He tells me a book length treatment of this topic is in the
works. A blog on the web site seems to be largely moribund, but Tim's
Facebook page may substitute for blogging.. Tim Hallinan is rare
among writers in sharing himself with those of his readers who are
interested. He describes himself as doing a great deal of his writing
in coffee shops, where I imagine him responding to us, his fans and
friends, at least partly as a way to break through to the next
dead-on cliff hanger.
In
Breathing
Water Tim Hallinan takes on
several of his major themes as he explores the worlds of child
exploitation in the Bangkok environment of buying and selling of
children as well as the depths of corruption and the huge gulf
between the richest billionaires at the top of the power pyramid in
Thailand and the depths of poverty experienced by the majority. He
examines the bridges between these two worlds which help to maintain
the power structure built on others' poverty. As the novel opens,
Poke is involved in a Poker game which includes a Thai billionaire
named Pan who has risen from poverty by mysterious means. In a fine
card-game set piece, Poke wins the opportunity to write Pan's
authorized biography. Within a few hours after this win, Poke
receives two telephone calls, one threatening him with death if he
writes the book, the other threatening the same end if he doesn't.
The twists and turns place Poke and his assembled little family at
risk. His descriptions of the opulence of Pan's life in contrast to
where he came from create a more nuanced and complex character rather
than the run of his villains, which represents a nice advance in
character development. Breathing Water
is perhaps the darkest of his books I had read, until a picked up The
Queen of Patpong.
In
each episode of the Poke Rafferty series, Tim Hallinan combines
travel writer Poke Rafferty's emerging domestic life with his new
wife Rose and their adopted daughter, Miaow. Earlier, or perhaps
later, Tim develops some elements of Miaow's background, but The
Queen of Patpong can truly be
characterized as Rose's book. All seems to be going well for Poke's
family. Miaow is eagerly participating in a school production of
Shakespeare's The Tempest,
while Rose's domestic agency, staffed with formal bar girls from the
Patpong sex district of Bangkok is becoming increasingly successful.
Suddenly, while the three are eating out together, a menacing
stranger from Rose's past life appears at the table. Rose recognizes
him and then stabs him in the hand with her steak knife as the three
escape, taking a circuitous route to their apartment, thinking
they've eluded the interloper. The next morning they find a bloody X
across their door. Miaow and Rose both withdraw into themselves,
Miaow to nurse her desire to be like all the other kids; Rose into
memories of the road that brought her to the place they find
themselves.
Isaan Village House
Bangkok Bar
There
follows a long and often difficult interlude in which readers are
filled in on Rose's back story, which flashes back to when she was a
fourteen or fifteen year old school-girl in her home village in Isaan
provicince where her name was Kwan. She is recruited (while her
father is simultaneously trying to sell her) by a sexy and glamorous
former town girl who has gone to Bangkok. Slowly, but surely, Kwan
becomes Rose, as she learns the ropes of first bar dancing and then
high end prostitution in the steamy Bangkok sex industry she has
since left to marry Poke and achieve her present life, now
threatened. The descriptions are harrowing while the suspense, always
a feature of Hallinan's best writing, is gripping. The book continues
to its page turner, exciting conclusion. Hallinan achieves all this
in The Queen of Patpong
with more than a nod at Shakespeare's The Tempest,
serving as an underpinning for the entire plot, an element not often
found in more mundane thrillers.
Tim(othy)
Hallinan is a complex, layered, nuanced writer who communicates in a
mass market genre often focusing more on the action than on the
motivation. There's always plenty of action in a Tim Hallinan
thriller. What distinguishes his work, however, is the deep,
pervasive set of values governing his principle characters, whether
it's Poke Rafferty or Junior Bender. Issues of responsibility,
family, honesty, and the search for self-understanding are always
present. They govern Poke's relentless efforts to protect and build
his wounded bird family within a corrupt political system in a city
that's widely recognized as the commercial sex capitol of the world,
a city and country he loves, as much for its negatives as despite
them. For furthers looks at how Tim thinks and a discussion of
the genesis of the Poke Rafferty series, see two fine interviews of
him where he discusses his work in Mostly
Fiction Book Reviews
and The
New Mystery Reader.
So
here I sit, with an e-galley of The
Hot Countries, due
out in the fall and one of the six Simeon Grist mysteries from the
1990's, which I bought from Amazon both on my Kindle and the five
other Simeon Grist books through Thrift
Books (a wonderful source for inexpensive used and out of print
books), which should be in my mailbox when we return home, ready to
keep reading the complete works. I think I have one or two Junior
Bender books still to read, and the newest one is due out later in
the year. They will join with Patrick O'Brien, John D. McDonald,
Robert Parker, and a few other writers whose works have captured me
enough to seek to read their entire body of works. At one time I
thought I'd try it with Dickens, but just couldn't manage it. One of
the differences I see between Hallinan and some of the others on my
list is that his characters seem to continue to develop as they
experience their lives, a quality which I didn't find in some of the
others. Hallinan deserves to be at or near the top of the heap.
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