Tim Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series hit the ground running
in 2007 with A Nail Through the Heart and
it has never slowed down. And with the
October 2015 release of The Hot Countries,
the seventh book in the series, Poke Rafferty fans again have reason to
celebrate.
Longtime fans will already know this, but for the
uninitiated, I’ll give a little basic background about Poke Rafferty and those
closest to him. Poke is a semi-successful
travel writer whose travel guides are a bit offbeat in the way that they
sometimes focus on the seedier sides of the cities he is exploring – and that’s
exactly what he was looking to do when he came to Bangkok. But along the way, life happened. Poke is now married to Rose, a former bar
girl, and they are living happily together with Miaow, their adopted
daughter. (Miaow, who was living on the
streets when Poke spotted her, is probably my favorite character in the whole
series.)
But Poke is more, much more, than just a travel guide
writer. The man is a born fixer, and he
does not mind getting his hands dirty.
When he sees someone suffering at the hands of others, he wants to fix
it – and with the help of some friends he usually does just that. Poke’s most important “helper” is Arthit, a
high-ranking Thai policeman, who also just happens to be Poke’s best
friend. The relationship between these
two strong men has, in fact, been a beautiful thing to watch as it has
developed and deepened over the seven books.
But now, in The Hot
Countries, everyone closest to Poke is being threatened by a mysterious
stranger who wants two things from Poke and will gladly kill any number of
innocent people if it forces Poke to give him what he wants. But there are two problems: Poke does not
even have one of the things being demanded of him, and he will be damned if he
will give up the other one. And so it
begins.
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Author Timothy Hallinan |
But as the bodies begin to fall and he ever so slowly closes
in on the man responsible, Poke will get some help from the unlikeliest group
of heroes imaginable: a bunch of seedy old men who came to Bangkok decades ago
strictly to enjoy the city’s wide open sex trade. Now, what’s left of these men spend their
days and nights hanging out at the Expat Bar, where they do their best to
pretend that they are still the young, virile men who first sat on one of those
barstools so many long years ago. And
who knows? Maybe they do still have a
little gas left in the tank after all.
Hallinan, in one paragraph, captures the sad essence of
these men. Here is part of that
paragraph:
“One night on Patpong around 3 a.m.,
exhausted, half drunk, and unwilling to return to the home he hand turned into
a shrine to her (the Thai woman he was still in love with) he walked into a tiny place called the Expat
Bar. And he stayed for forty-three
years.
Getting old.”
The ending of The Hot
Countries achieved something that rarely happens to me when I am reading:
it left me with a tear in my eye. I am a
fan of series writing because of the way the good ones so fully develop not
only the main character, but also several supporting characters. I have read in and out of many crime fiction
series since the eighties, and a few of them are so remarkable that they have
become longtime favorite books of mine.
The Poke Rafferty series has earned its place among this select
group. I look forward (and hope) to be
reading more Poke Rafferty stories for a long, long time.
Post #2,571