The Queen of Patpong

I am not easily impressed by mystery writers as I have been a fan since I first learned to read and have literally read thousands so they have become rather predictable. However, Timothy Hallinan is astonishingly brilliant. He writes with his heart and has a depth of understanding of humanity that few people on this planet even begin to comprehend. His characters come alive and stay with you long after you have read the last sentence. The only problem with this, is that once you open one of his books, you can't stop reading, so nothing else gets done until the final page is turned and then you want to devour the next one and then the next one. WOW!!! I want to meet this man so I can bow to his mastery. Thank you, thank you, thank you for so beautifully illustrating what I have long known to be true. A man can be a "man's man" and yet have a pure heart full of unconditional love.

If you loved 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' you will love this book. But unlike Geisha, this has one of the best suspense, action-sequences I've ever read. It is simply the most exciting, thrilling, heart-wrenching, heart-stopping novel I've read in years. I couldn't put it down. It was riveting from beginning to end, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It should be at the top of every best seller list in the country.

The paradoxical title hints at the contradictions lurking within the pages of Timothy Hallinan's latest literary thriller, The Queen of Patpong. Rose Rafferty, prostitute turned employment counselor, is a fitting queen for the seedy area of Bangkok around Patpong Road. She's married to writer / investigator Poke Rafferty who gallantly helps bar girls turn their lives around between cases. Poke isn't your average brawny hero. He stumbles into danger and is saved more often by his intellect and local knowledge than weapons or martial skills. The portrayal is so genuine, the reader can imagine Hallinan in Poke's place. Hallinan's prose is so lyrical and his focus on character so sharp that you will forget this is a thriller even as you careen through Rose's past life from village farm girl to bar girl. Like many literary thrillers, the plot is fairly linear, yet layer upon layer of character depth and a few well-timed twists keep the story fresh. Hallinan shares an intimate view of the lurid world of Bangkok bar girls that is chaotic, intriguing, and often disconcerting. The Queen of Patpong is captivating even as it delivers a message of Hallinan's deep caring for these girls or maybe because his caring feels so authentic. Highly recommended. C.J. West Author, The End of Marking Time and the Randy Black series of thrillers [...]

I have read all four of Hallinan's Poke Rafferty books but I've enjoyed this one, the fourth, the most. If I had to rank them in order as to my favorites, it would be 4, 1, 2, and 3. What nagged me throughout the first three was that while Hallinan is a wonderful writer and a master at creating suspenseful scenes, I never got a sense of place. I haven't been to Bangkok, but I have been to Saigon so I have a good idea of the madness that can be such a city. I never got that feel until The Queen of Patpong. The author did a magnificent job capturing the essence of the city as well as a poverty ridden village. While reading all four books allows you to see the full development of Rafferty, Rose and Miaow, one could read the first one and the fourth and still enjoy a heck of a ride. I highly recommend this series. Loren W. Christensen, coauthor of ON Combat and author of many others.

This fourth installment of Timothy Hallinan's Poke Rafferty series, set in Bangkok, is such a stunning, magical thriller that it will be a real challenge to do it justice here. But I'll give it a try. American travel writer Poke, former bar dancer Rose, and their adoptive daughter, Miaow, have at last become a family. They are enjoying dinner in a restaurant one evening, when a dangerous, evil man from Rose's past whom she thought she had killed in self-defense suddenly appears, threatening their newfound happiness and their lives. A section of the book called "The Sea Change" takes us back into Rose's past, in 1996, when the innocent teenage girl is coerced to leave her village and become immersed in a radically different sort of life as a bar dancer in Bangkok's red-light district Patpong. It's there that she meets the handsome man who very nearly ends her life. The whole story is ingeniously interwoven with scenes from a school production of "The Tempest," in which Miaow is appearing as Ariel. This compelling, beautifully written novel is not only suspenseful and filled with twists and turns; it's also deeply moving, with vividly drawn characters, and it comes to an unexpected resolution that's very, very satisfying. Strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys a terrific thriller of high literary quality.