For the last couple of weeks my letters have been about Inspector Tay’s encounter with Pattaya in THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE. The collision between a straight-laced Singaporean cop and probably the most notorious tourist town in Thailand was fun to write about, but I have to tell you those letters have elicited some interesting reactions.

Some people loved them. Some people hated them. Thailand is a place that everyone seems to have strong opinions about. Including people, maybe especially people, who probably couldn’t find it on a map.

When in LAUNDRY MAN Jack Shepherd walked out of his American law firm to become a university professor in Thailand, he caught the full force of those strong opinions from almost everyone he knew.

When people in Washington first began to hear that I was leaving to live in Bangkok and teach at Chulalongkorn University, a few of them jumped to the conclusion I was making a point of some kind, abandoning the land of my birth for reasons that were probably political and no doubt wacky. Others who heard what I was doing—and I noticed this group seemed to be composed mainly of women—attributed my change of address to middle-aged male angst fueled by overly moist fantasies of slim, submissive Thai women serving me brightly colored tropical drinks with little umbrellas in them. Most people, of course, fell into neither of those categories. Most people just assumed that I had lost my damned mind.

Part of the problem was that the whole idea of living in a foreign country was just so strange to most Americans, particularly since very few of them had ever seriously entertained the thought, however fleetingly, themselves. After all, everyone wanted to come to America, didn’t they? Half the population of the earth was fighting to live in Orange County and work in a 7-Eleven, wasn’t it? Why in God’s name would an American even think of living somewhere else?

At first Shepherd tried explaining to people what he was doing, and why. But soon he ran into a problem.

Few Americans seemed to know much of anything about any place that was not America, but still it surprised me that I didn’t know even one person back in Washington who would have had anything at all to say about Bangkok, other than on one of two topics.

Food was one of these topics, of course. Everyone I knew claimed to love Thai food. Sending out for Chinese was cheap. Sending out for Thai seemed somehow a lot hipper. Of course, most Westerners had no real idea what they were actually eating in either case, but Thai food was both cheap and hip, so how could you beat that?

The other topic, of course, was sex. Bangkok was inexorably intertwined in most people’s minds with stories they’d heard somewhere, although few would admit to remembering exactly where, of an unabashedly dissolute life and the easy availability of free sex. Well, perhaps not exactly free, but certainly pretty inexpensive sex, at least by world standards. Thai sex was a little like Thai food, cheap but with a kind of exotic style to it. Couldn’t beat that combination in any context, could you?

With all that going for it, you’d think then that the idea of living in Bangkok would be a pretty enticing idea to a lot of people, wouldn’t you? You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

It didn’t take Shepherd very long to work out that he was going to be hearing this sort of thing a lot. Denouncing Thailand was particularly big among high-minded folks who wanted to make sure you understand exactly how high-minded they really were.

A couple of times I tried joking that, well, a man could sure make a lot worse choice than taking up residence in a city that was internationally famed for food and sex, but when I saw the solemn expressions that crack engendered in most Americans, I swiftly eliminated it from my repertoire. Maybe the suggestion that food and sex were actually significant parts of life made Americans uncomfortable. Maybe I ought to have more friends from France.

Anyway, the reaction I typically got when people found out I lived in Bangkok was something I had gotten used to. Oh, the place was exotic and interesting, they murmured, but yet . . . somehow it was still a city where a lot of people went who weren’t particularly nice. Oddly, on the whole, that perception had more substance to it than I really would have liked.

After Jack Shepherd had lived in Thailand a few years, he could feel his own attitudes toward the place slowly changing. He’s no longer a fresh-faced expat with wonder in his eyes. He’s older, maybe a little more cynical, and a lot more clear-sighted.

Here’s the way it starts to look to him then….

I had always thought there had to be some kind of international network devoted to coaxing social rejects and dropout cases worldwide into coming to Bangkok, because come they did. By the thousands. They walked away from third-shift jobs in places like Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Berlin, and Toronto, packed what they had, bought a cheap airline ticket, and made their way to the Land of Smiles. Some were looking for a cheap tropical paradise; others thought they’d found Sodom and Gomorrah; but almost every one of them was hoping in some way to make a fresh start on a life that up until then probably had little to recommend it. Many of these refugees from reality probably couldn’t have located the city on a map before they’d decided it was the place for them, maybe they still couldn’t, but now Bangkok had become their last, maybe their only hope.

Shepherd is absolutely right about that. Thailand attracts every kind of foreigner you can imagine. The ordinary, the washed-up, the lost, and the just plain crazy.

They are all there: the lonely, the frightened, the guilty, the depressed, and the psychotic. Soaked with sweat, they rush back and forth from one bar to another, reeking of that peculiarly sour, metallic odor habitually given off by the emotionally overmatched and underachieving. It is this flood tide of the lost and misbegotten that makes the hours after midnight what Thailand, for foreigners at least, really is.

If you haven’t read my Jack Shepherd novels yet, I hope you’ll try LAUNDRY MAN, KILLING PLATO, or perhaps even the newest one just published in March, A WORLD OF TROUBLE.

The latter two titles are only $2.99 worldwide in every known e-book format and £6.56 in their trade paperback editions sold only outside of North America. A WORLD OF TROUBLE is $4.99 in its e-book editions available worldwide. The trade paperback is available now thorughout Asia and will be available in Europe, the UK, and at Amazon UK in July at £6.56.

Stay cool. I’ll write again next week.

Last week, we left Inspector Samuel Tay of Singapore CID in Pattaya, Thailand, where he has followed a chain of clues to the brutal murder of an American woman found at the Singapore Marriott, a murder that is at the heart of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE.

Tay and Cally Parks, a State Department regional security officer who is also involved in the case, are in Pattaya to meet a source of Cally’s who might be able to help them.

“Where are we meeting the mystery man?” Tay asked.
“A place down on Walking Street. It’s called Baby Dolls.”
Tay gave Cally a long look.
“I’m asking the favor, Sam. The least I can do is meet the man wherever he wants me to meet him.”

So Cally shows Tay the way to Walking Street.

The stroll was pleasant enough; at least it was at first. They followed a broad walkway bordered with spindly palm trees along the beach side of the main road. A light breeze off the water stirred the sodden air and thinned the brackish clouds of automobile exhaust.

The ocean breezes, now blocked by the buildings, were just a memory, and a sense of languid sleaze filled the still, heavy air. A mix of sour smells hung over the street: rotting garbage, stale beer, vomit, and sweat. It was a carnival of the lost and misbegotten. There were underage prostitutes on the hustle, over-aged hookers on the stroll, and incorruptible cops on the take. There were bar touts, flower peddlers, cigarette sellers, and vendors of genuine Rolexes for only five dollars. There was everything Tay ever dreamed could exist anywhere, and a lot he had never imagined could exist at all.

By the time they shouldered their way through the crowds to Baby Dolls, Tay’s shirt was soaking wet and sticking to his back and chest. Pattaya, God help it, was even more humid than Singapore.

Baby Dolls was a blue two-story building outlined with flashing tubes of white neon. Just in front of the entrance, half a dozen young girls stood beckoning people toward the heavy black curtains covering its doorway. They were all dressed in uniforms prim enough to mark them as high-school students and they looked so young that, for all Tay knew, maybe they were.

He stopped in front of the building and stood with his hands on his hips.

“It’s a go-go bar,” he said to Cally.

When THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE was first published, there wasn’t a bar in Pattaya named Baby Dolls. It was a name I just made up. In another one of those twists that seem to occur with amazing frequency when you write novels set in Asia, there now is a Baby Dolls in Pattaya. And it is a bar that has, shall we say, a certain reputation. Okay, let’s not beat around the bush here. Baby Dolls is known far and wide as the raunchiest bar in Pattaya, and that’s saying quite a lot.

Cally’s source is a man named John August. As it happens, August owns Baby Dolls. At least he says he does.

“What are we doing here, John?” Cally asked.
August put both hands flat on the table and tilted his head slightly to one side. He smiled thinly. “It’s my place. I thought you might like to see it.”
“You own this place?” she asked.
“Sure.”
It was plain August relished his surprise.
“Everybody needs something to do in his old age, Cally. Some kind of retirement gig.” 
August raised his hands, palms up, and gestured to the room around him. 
“This is mine.”

Even my made-up version of Baby Dolls is all a bit too much for Tay. God only knows what he would think about the real one that has sprung up in Pattaya. Fortunately enough for Tay, Cally has soon enough had her fill of the seemingly endless raunchiness and bolts.

Cally took a deep breath and exhaled heavily. Then without another word she stood up and walked away. When she reached the sidewalk along Beach Road, she turned left, and kept walking. Not knowing what else to do, Tay stood up and followed.

THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE is available at Amazon in both ebook and printed editions, as well as at good bookstores everywhere, at least those outside of North America. The Amazon page for THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE is HERE. If you haven’t read it, I have to tell you that it is one of my personal favorites out of all my books, and Inspector Samuel Tay is one my my favorite characters.

This fall, there’s going to be a second Inspector Tay book, so I hope you’ll read THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE now and get ready Inspector Tay’s next case.

I’ll write again next week.

Stay cool.

For two days last week, the Kindle edition of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE was completely free. Anyone who wanted a copy to read, or even wanted a copy for a friend, could just go to Amazon and ask for one to be sent to them at no cost at all. The offer was well publicized by a number of the large Kindle-related websites, and I am absolutely delighted to be able to tell you now that just over 23,000 copies of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE were requested by readers during the forty-eight hours the Kindle edition was free.

THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE even reached the very top of Amazon’s download lists: #1 on the overall list for Amazon UK, and #13 for the Amazon US list. For virtually the entire time the book was available free, it was Amazon’s #1 among mysteries, #1 among suspense novels, and #1 among police procedurals.

Even better, at least from my point of view, as soon as the Kindle edition of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE went back to its regular price of $2.99 it began to climb the charts all over again. As I write this now, THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE is at #75 on the overall Amazon UK bestseller list, and #3 on the list of bestselling police procedurals. In the US, it is at #270 on the overall Amazon list of bestsellers and at #8 on the list of bestselling police procedurals. In the 36 hours since it went back to its regular price, it has sold another 1000 copies.

With all those new copies of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE in readers’ hands now, that no doubt mean Inspector Tay is making a lot of new friends these days, and that’s altogether a good thing because there will be another Inspector Tay novel out soon. And after all of last week’s success for THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE, I’m hoping the new Inspector Tay novel will get some really serious attention from readers when it is published this fall.

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Since there were so many copies downloaded last week, there ought to be a fair few readers out there this week with their noses stuck in THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE so I thought I might tell you something about an unexpected excursion Inspector Tay makes to Thailand about halfway through the book. Sam Tay is such a straight-laced Singaporean, I thought it would be interesting to see how he would deal with having to chase a suspect right into the belly of the beast.

So I sent Sam off to Thailand.

And not just to any place in Thailand.

I dispatched him straight into Thailand’s heart of darkness itself.

Tay doesn’t know much about Pattaya, but from what he has heard about it he doesn’t expect to like it.

“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve never heard of Pattaya?” Cally asked.

Tay thought he probably had, but nothing was coming to him right at that moment.

“Do you really expect me to believe,” she continued, “that you are the only male in all of Asia, perhaps the only male in the entire known universe, who has never heard of Pattaya, Thailand?”

And then Tay remembered.

Pattaya was a slightly shabby beach resort a couple of hours south of Bangkok that had a reputation for commercial sex and freewheeling debauchery sufficient to overwhelm the limitations of most people’s imaginations. Tay had never been to Pattaya. He was no prude, at least he didn’t think he was, but he had heard enough about Pattaya to know that he probably wouldn’t like it very much.

Tay and Cally Parks, a regional security officer for the US State Department who is also involved in the case Tay is working on, drive from Bangkok to Pattaya to meet a source of Cally’s she thinks can help them.

As they drew closer to the lights, the scrub fields began to fill with buildings, most of them no more than one or two stories high and none that looked to Tay to be particularly encouraging. Cally circled a roundabout with some kind of darkened sculpture in its center and turned onto a road that ran along the ocean. On one side of the road the sea was dark and quiet and the narrow beach was empty, but on the opposite side small, open-air bars lined the sidewalk. They throbbed with music and pulsed with light.

  Tay could see that the customers in the bars were almost all Caucasian men, most middle-aged but some considerably older. Dressed uniformly in shorts and T-shirts, the men sat in ones and twos talking to the girls and playing with bottles of beer sitting in front of them. There were a great many such men and even more Thai women fluttering around them. The sight made Tay think of seagulls trailing a fishing fleet.

Cally pulls up to the Pattaya Marriott, which doesn’t please Tay all that much. He’s no fan of Marriott’s — they’re way too American for him — and besides, since the first body in the case that’s driving him nuts was found at the Singapore Marriott, he’s pretty much up to his ass in Marriott’s already.

“I booked us at the Marriott.” Cally glanced over at Tay and scrutinized his face as the neon lights from the bars rippled across it. “I hope that’s okay.”

Tay didn’t say a word.

Cally was waiting for Tay in a lounge chair by the Marriott’s swimming pool. It was after ten and, except for her, the pool area was dark and deserted.

They just sat for a while without talking. It was a companionable silence and neither of them seemed to be in any hurry to break it. Off in the distance, Tay could hear faint music on the ocean breeze and the distant sound of voices from somewhere. He tried to decide where the music was coming from and what the voices were saying, but he couldn’t.

Next week I’ll show you some more of Pattaya and introduce you to the source that Tay and Cally came to Pattaya to meet. Those of you who have hung around Pattaya a little (and I promise never to reveal your real identities to anyone), may have bumped into him here or there, or at least into a guy very much like him.

If you haven’t yet read THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE, it’s available through Amazon, both in printed and ebook editions (you can find it HERE), as well as at all the best bookstores in Asia, Europe, and the UK.

If your favorite bookstore doesn’t have THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE, order it from Amazon for your e-reader (did I mention you can find it HERE?). And start thinking about shopping at a better bookstore from now on.

Stay cool.

This last couple of weeks I’ve been writing about the breakdown of order and democracy in Thailand and the response has been very interesting.

I’ve had more people unsubscribe from my Letters over this two week period than in any period before, ever. On the other hand, I’ve also had more new subscriptions, too. Maybe that means some people perceive me as making a political statement they like, or don’t like. Maybe that means some people are interested in reading about serious topics concerning Asia, and others aren’t. Maybe it was just a coincidence and it doesn’t mean anything at all.

Either way, let’s try a less controversial topic this week, just for a change of pace. How about this? Want a free Kindle edition of one of my books? Is that noncontroversial enough for you?

Please allow me to direct your attention to my fourth novel, THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE. For those of you who don’t know know anything about it, THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE is set largely in Singapore. It’s about a police inspector named Samuel Tay who works for the elite special investigations section of CID and who clashes with the American ambassador over an American woman found brutalized and murdered in a suite at the Marriott Hotel.

Anyway, here’s the really important thing about THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE right at the moment….

The Kindle edtion of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE will be be absolutely free on Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

Seriously. The Kindle edtion of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE. Absolutely free. For two days only. Grab a copy for yourself. Tell Amazon to send copies as gifts to as many of your friends as you like. And all without having to come up with a single cent to for any of them.

The reason I like Inspector Samuel Tay so much is that, like many of us, Sam has found himself living in a world he hardly recognzies anymore. And also like most of us, sometimes he struggles a little to find his place in it.

This is the kind of Singapore where Sam Tay grew up.

Buildings like that were all gone now, as gone as if they had never existed at all, and now the city was mostly somewhere he did not know, somewhere he had never been. For over thirty years the people who decided such things, the bastards, had been tearing down glorious structures just because they were old. Sometimes they even replaced them with new structures touted as modern versions of whatever they replaced. They never were, of course. They never were anything, really, other than just new. Through the merciless grinders of progress the soul of a city had passed, along even with Tay’s own soul, and each of them had emerged as … well, he really had no idea.

Now Singapore looks more like this.

I think Sam Tay is a great character, and I’m hopeful that our offering free copies of the Kindle edition of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE through Amazon for a couple of days later this week will earn Sam a bunch of new readers and at least a few new friends.

THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE is one of my personal favorites out of all my books, so it was a bit of a disappointment to me that THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE got the poorest distribution of any of my titles and consequently may well be the least well known of all my books. But I’m doing a second Inspector Tay book anyway, on what is more or less blind faith that I can find some way to get more attention for it than the first one got. The new book will be out sometime in the fall. That gives me about six months to make a whole heck of a lot of new frends for Inspector Tay or it’s likely to go nowhere. Now that THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE is available in an e-book edition, I figure I’ve got a decent shot at doing that.

For starters, I’m taking advantage of every opportunity I can find to get the book in front of just as many people as possible. I’ve placed THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE in the Kindle Select progam, which means that those of you with Kindles who are members of Amazon Prime can now borrow THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE from Amazon anytime you like and read it at absolutely no cost to you. You can find it HERE to borrow it free anytime under your Amazon Prime membership.

On the other hand, I know that a good many of you aren’t members of Amazon Prime, or perhaps you read your Kindle books in one of the many popular Kindle apps rather than directly on a Kindle. I don’t want to leave you out, so here’s what I’ve done about that….

This Wednesday and Thursday, April 25 and April 26, the Kindle edtion of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE will be absolutely free for everyone.

If you haven’t met Inspector Samuel Tay yet, I hope you’ll take advantage of the opportunity and download a copy of THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE while the price can’t be beaten. Even if you have read THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE already, you can go to the page for the Kindle edition and send a gift copy to anyone you like — all you need is their email address — and the gift won’t cost you a cent.

I’ll thank you for it now. And your friends will thank you for it later.

I’ve gotten quite a few emails over the past couple of weeks from people in Thailand who have tried to find a copy my new novel, A WORLD OF TROUBLE, and couldn’t. The order was shipped to the local distributor in Thailand at the beginning of March, but Asia Books and Bookazine were still telling customers last week that it has been “delayed” and Kinokuniya was telling customers that it is “only available as an ebook.”

Happily, a friend emailed me yesterday that he had finally found a supply of copies of A WORLD OF TROUBLE in stock at the Asia Books on Sukhumvit at Soi 15. That’s Asia Books very first store, a stand-alone building directly on Sukhumvit almost in front of Robinson’s Department Store that has been there as long an anyone in Bangkok can remember. I’ve also been told by another friend that at least one Bookazine had stock as well, and there was a really nice review of A WORLD OF TROUBLE in the Pattaya Mail a few days ago so maybe the book is now available in Pattaya, too. Other than that, I’m honestly not at all sure whether it’s now available at other bookstores in Thailand, too, but I did want to let those of you who have been searching Bangkok for a copy of A WORLD OF TROUBLE to know what I’m being told.

After fourteen years of writing Asian crime novels, I’m pretty well used to my books being poorly stocked and badly displayed in Thailand, but it still embarrasses me a little to have to tell people who are good enough to ask that I don’t know where they can find copies of one title or another. So, for once, it’s nice to tell you where you can find them.

Stay cool. I’ll write again next week.

Last week I sent you some pictures of the recent political upheaval in Thailand, a period I drew on as the background to my new Jack Shepherd novel, A WORLD OF TROUBLE.

This week I have pictures for you of yet another day on the streets of Bangkok, one which none of us who experienced it will ever quite forget.

In 2006, the Thai army took over the city, ousted Thailand’s more-or-less democratically elected government, blocked international news feeds, and limited communications with the outside world. I was having a couple of drinks that night with a guy I hadn’t seen in quite a while. We were in a bar that two young Americans who were big fans of my books had just opened. In a gesture I absolutely loved, they had named their bar after my first novel, THE BIG MANGO.

I was smoking a cigar (you could still smoke in a Bangkok bar back in those days) when my cell phone rang. It was an occasional source at the American embassy calling to tell me that a military coup had apparently begun. Details were still sketcy, and no one knew exactly what it was all about anyway, but when he found out where I was he urged me to get off the streets and go home as quickly as I could.

It did seem pretty sensible to get out of the way, particularly as a foreigner in a country that sometimes seemed to barely tolerate us, so I took his advice. At least I did more or less, although I admit I took my time about it. Within an hour, every commercial establishment I saw was shut down and the streets were virtually deserted.

This is what Bangkok looked like on the night the Land of Smiles stopped smiling…

The next morning, I went out with a guy who knew the streets and had friends in the army and could keep me out of trouble. We drove around. We checked the spots where foreigners could generally be found, and we went across town into the government quarter near the palace.

This is what we found…

All of the foreigners I know in Thailand talk constantly about what is likely to become of this poor, benighted little country. Frankly, all of the Thais I know talk constantly about exactly the same thing. For as long as most any of us can remember, Thailand has lurched from one crisis to another, from chaos to apparent stability, and back to chaos again.

A lot of foreigners profess to be optimistic about their future as expats in Thailand. They remind me that nothing in Thailand every really changes, that Thais have a remarkable way of just getting on with life whatever happens in their country. There is some truth to that, and I hope the people who believe it are right. But often I wonder. Maybe they are just whistling past the proverbial graveyard, giving voice to their hopes, wanting those hopes to drown out their fears.

Every time another foreigner tells me that they are going to be just fine in Thailand, that none of this has anything to do with us anyway, I think back to the day in 2006 that I poked around a quite and shuttered city and saw the armed troops, the barbed wire, and the heavy battle tanks that had taken control of Bangkok.

And, in particular, I think of this fellow we encountered in a street just off Silom Road…

When I remember that expressionless face just staring back at me that day, I also remember what somebody once told me is the first rule of survival for every foreigner living in a third world country.

Keep a bag packed, and at least two routes to the airport all mapped out.

Stay hopeful.

But stay safe.

Last week I sent you some pictures of the streets of Bangkok that set a pretty happy tone for the place, and I got more mail thanking me for those pictures than I have ever before gotten in reponse to any of my Letters from Asia.

This week I have some pictures of the streets of Bangkok on quite a different day for you.

My new Jack Shepherd novel, A WORLD OF TROUBLE (available at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and cool booksellers throughout Asia and Europe), is set in a time when the political conflicts in Thailand have grown to such a point that the country is teetering on the edge of civil war. The streets are swarming with vilolent protestors and their battles grow more ferocious every day. You can smell the frustration and the anger in the air.

But, as is almost always the case in Thailand, what you see on the surface is only part of the reality. Sometimes the smallest part.

IT WAS A good four hundred yards from the Grand up to Silom Road, but as soon as Shepherd stepped outside he heard in the distance the tinny screech of loudspeakers and the deeper rumble of a rhythmically chanting crowd. He stood for a moment and listened, wondering if perhaps he would be better off walking in another direction.

WHEN SHEPHERD GOT to Silom Road he stood on the sidewalk and watched the masses of marchers surge by. There were a lot more of them than he expected. Was the government really that popular? Maybe, but then again, maybe not. He understood the basic principle of the color-coding and knew it was government supporters who wore yellow and those who opposed the government who wore red, but he was a little vague on all the nuances involved in the concept. And this being Thailand, he suspected they were many, and largely unfathomable to foreigners.

Of course, most of the demonstrators were no doubt a little vague on the nuances as well. Many of them were not believers in any cause, but merely hired hands paid on a daily basis to carry the colors of one side or the other. Well behind them, deep in the shadows, stood the men who paid the poor to battle it out in the streets in the name of platitudes about which not one of them gave a damn. The goal, of course, was to control the government so the men in the shadows could line their own pockets and those of their friends. If one group had that power then the other side didn’t. It was that simple really. And that was why the battle went on and on, gaining almost daily in ferocity, with no end in sight.

IT SEEMED INCONCEIVABLE to Shepherd that a street battle would take place right there in the middle of the financial district. Thais famously avoided face-to-face confrontations and nothing like that had happened yet in spite of the political turmoil that had gripped Bangkok for months. It wasn’t that Thais were shy about attacking their enemies, it was just the face-to-face part they didn’t get. The locals had never been able to understand the Western obsession for duking it out toe-to-toe with your adversaries. To Thais, it seemed silly to square off against anyone. That was why Thais generally nursed their anger, waited patiently until their enemy’s back was turned, and then brought everything they had.

MIKE NODDED AND Shepherd could see him thinking about what that might mean to him. He was right in the midst of an upheaval that was beginning to look very much like a civil war, and he wasn’t weighing the great principles of human rights and self-government that the talking heads on TV went on about. Instead, Shepherd figured Mike probably had a bag packed and a route to the airport mapped out, and he was thinking about how much longer he would risk getting his ass shot off before he decided to run.

NOTHING IN THAILAND ever really changed. Mai pen rai, loosely translated as ‘never mind,’ was practically the Thai national motto. Nothing dented the somnolence of Thais for very long. But Shepherd thought back to the faces he had watched not very long ago right on this very street, Thai faces contorted with rage and twisted in hatred. And he wondered if this time it might be different. If, this time, all the collective unconsciousness in the world might not be enough. 

A lot of us are wondering about that. And this is what worries us: the last time this sort of thing really happened in Thailand, this is the way it ended up.

Stay cool.

Read A WORLD OF TROUBLE.

And hope for the best.

A WORLD OF TROUBLE, the third novel in my Jack Shepherd series, was published last week and, happily, it’s already started racking up a bunch of those important 5 star reviews on Amazon. In case you haven’t read it yet (and exactly why would that be?), here’s a little more about the places where you’ll find Jack Shepherd when you do get around to reading it.

After LAUNDRY MAN and KILLING PLATO, Shepherd had had enough of Thailand, and Thailand had had enough of Shepherd, so these days he’s living in Hong Kong and trying to build up some kind of a law practice. In my last two Letters from Asia I gave you a few details about Shepherd’s new life and showed you some pictures of the part of Hong Kong where he lives and works now. On the other hand, getting away from Thailand hasn’t turned out to be quite as easy as Shepherd thought it would be. In A WORLD OF TROUBLE, Shepherd’s prize client (okay, his only client) asks him to go to Thailand to deal with a sensitive matter that requires a lawyer who has something of a…uh, personal touch.

“I want you to get your ass to Bangkok. I’ll get everything gathered up in Bangkok Bank for you. I’ve got a contact there. You talk to him and get everything shifted to Hong Kong, then you can bury it in some nominee companies.”

“Look, Charlie, I don’t—”

“Leave tonight. Those pricks are really trying to screw me.”

“I don’t want to go to Thailand.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I told you I wasn’t going back there again.”

But, of course, Shepherd does go back there again. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t have ended up with a novel, would I?

Now Shepherd and I will both admit that Thailand has its attractions.

Thailand is the Italy of Asia. Great food, beautiful women, joyously corrupt, and totally dysfunctional. Sometimes Shepherd wondered if maybe it might not be the right place for him after all. He liked food. He liked women. He was a true connoisseur of corruption. And for the last six months he had been even more dysfunctional than Thailand.

All of those are things that a lot of people like about Thailand, but at least one of the things Shepherd particularly enjoys about Bangkok might surprise you. He likes simply walking the streets.

Shepherd liked walking in Bangkok. That was a good thing, since walking was the most practical way to get around. Cars, motorcycles, buses, bicycles, vans, and even tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled vehicles that roar like pissed-off lawnmowers, choke the city’s narrow streets day and night with traffic so snarled it has become a tourist attraction.

But here’s what Shepherd likes most about walking in Bangkok.

A lot of the city’s life is lived right out there on its streets. People eat their meals on the streets, get their hair cut on the streets, have their shoes repaired on the streets, and do their shopping on the streets. On every walk through the city, he passed through an endless succession of vignettes of people living their lives. It all somehow fused together into an exotic brew of adventure and romance that still held a lot of attraction for him, whatever else he might think about Bangkok now.

This is the sort of thing Shepherd is talking about….

I walk the streets a lot in Bangkok, too. Yeah, it’s hot, and the sidewalks are mostly broken up, and the air smells terrible, but there are some things about it that make the whole sweaty experience worthwhile.

I’ll write again next week and show you some pictures of a side of Bangkok that I’ll bet not more than a handful of you have ever seen.

Meanwhile, A WORLD OF TROUBLE is now available throughout Asia in a printed edition published by Marshall Cavendish International and will start turning up in Europe and the UK by early summer.

E-book editions are available worldwide right now at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble, and for other e-readers through Smashwords. Eventually, A WORLD OF TROUBLE will be available on iBooks, too, but Apple just runs its bookstore a little more slowly than most other people run theirs.

Stay cool.

 

Last week, I gave you a little preview of A WORLD OF TROUBLE, my new Jack Shepherd novel that is now available in print in Asia, Europe, and the UK, and in e-book editions worldwide.

I introduced you to the area in Hong Kong where Shepherd is now living in a borrowed apartment, at least temporarily, and I showed you where Shepherd’s office is located and the Mid-levels escalator that he uses for his commute to work. This week, I want to show you two other important places in Shepherd’s world: his favorite restaurant in that part of Hong Kong (and, I admit, my own as well), and a Chinese temple not far away from his office that I think is one of the great sights in all of Hong Kong.

Around 7:00 p.m. he decided he’d had enough. He locked up the office and headed to Jimmy’s Kitchen for dinner. An old-time Hong Kong expat hangout down at the bottom of Wyndham Street, Jimmy’s was one of Shepherd’s favorite places to pull up a stool and have dinner alone at the bar. 

Jimmy’s Kitchen is all dark wood paneling, wall sconces with red cloth shades, elderly waiters in black with starched white aprons, and booths that are either tufted red leather or pretty good vinyl imitations. It’s the kind of a place where you can easily imagine Frank Sinatra sauntering through the door, throwing a two-fingered salute to the bartender, and breaking into a couple of choruses of ‘My Way.’ And it is unquestionably the last restaurant on earth with both Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska on the menu. Shepherd liked Jimmy’s for three reasons. The food was pretty good; the prices were generally reasonable; and he was almost always the youngest person in the place. 

I want to thank those of you who responded to my slightly embarrassing begging last week and posted reviews of my books on the various e-book sales sites. I particularly liked the comments which cropped up several times that my novels aren’t really fiction, but that they are more or less drawn from events in which I may (or may not) have participated over the years. If that’s what you think, you’re going to get real a kick out of A WORLD OF TROUBLE.

Those of you who have followed Jack Shepherd through LAUNDRY MAN and KILLING PLATO know Shepherd is an American lawyer who, on a whim, bailed out of his law firm in Washington and took a job teaching international business at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. At the end of KILLING PLATO, however, Chula refused to renew Shepherd’s contact. His escapades had been a bit too much for the staid and conservative Thais, so in A WORLD OF TROUBLE Shepherd has taken up residence in a borrowed apartment in Hong Kong while he tries to figure out how he’s going to earn a living.

The only thing he can think of is to go back to practicing law, but his notoriety is making it tough to attract clients. So far, he only has one, but that one is pretty interesting: a vastly wealthy former prime minister of Thailand now living in splendid exile in Dubai.

Shepherd liked living in Hong Kong well enough, and Freddy’s apartment was pretty nice. It was in a district called the Mid-levels, not a particularly romantic name for a neighborhood perhaps, but the designation was at least reasonably descriptive since the Mid-levels is the area midway up the hillside between Hong Kong’s famous harbor and the top of Victoria Peak.

Back in the 1990s, in a highly imaginative but ultimately unsuccessful effort to ease Hong Kong’s chronic traffic congestion, they built a half-mile long outdoor escalator running down from the Mid-levels, cutting through the center of SoHo and ending at the financial district in Central near the harbor. It wasn’t actually a single long escalator, but rather a ladder of about twenty escalators tied together by short, glass-roofed walkways and moving belts. In the mornings, the whole Rube Goldberg contraption ran downhill and then, late in the morning, it reversed and everything ran uphill for the rest of the day. 

What Shepherd liked most about Freddy’s apartment was that the Mid-levels escalator was just outside its door. He loved to ride on it down the hill into the heart of the city. Instead of jostling through the crowds packed into Hong Kong’s steaming streets, he could stand quietly and contemplated his surroundings while he was towed at a comfortable pace straight through the heart of the bedlam. The Mid-levels escalator turned the mayhem of Hong Kong into a Disneyland ride. It was all Shepherd could do not to hum ‘It’s a Small, Small, Small, Small World’ every time he used it.

 

Shepherd liked the Mid-levels escalator so much that he rented a small office about halfway down the hill from Freddy’s apartment right in the middle of SoHo, which is an acronym for ‘south of Hollywood Road.’ Hong Kong’s SoHo, like its New York namesake, tried hard to be the hippest and most pretentious neighborhood going. In the blocks around Staunton and Elgin Streets, a cool new restaurant or bar either opened or, more likely, closed almost every week.

Shepherd ducked into the Pacific Coffee Company and grabbed a large coffee and a cinnamon roll. There was a long counter across from the window that looked out into Hollywood Road and he stood leaning on it, watching the traffic while he ate the roll. Shepherd finished his cinnamon roll and dumped the wrapper in the trash. Then he took the rest of his coffee with him and crossed the street to the little shophouse where he had his office.

In spite of the stylishness of the neighborhood, Shepherd’s office was pretty utilitarian. It was a single, averaged-sized room on the second floor of an old shophouse just above a noodle shop. It had very little to recommend it, except for one thing really. The Mid-levels escalator ran right to its front door. That was the real attraction of the place for Shepherd. He could commute to work every day by escalator. How cool was that?

 

This is the building I had in mind when I picked out a location for Shepherd’s office, but it’s changed a bit since then. The place is now called ‘The Low Price Shop’ (notice the sign in the upper righthand corner), and it sells mostly kitchy tourist junk. Back when I first spotted the shophouse and decided to rent it for Shepherd, however, it had a much more intriguing name. It was called ‘The Low Price Noodle Shop,’ and I couldn’t thinking of a better place for Jack Shepherd to come to work every morning, climb the stairs just out of frame on the right, and settle behind his desk with a cup of coffie to try and figure out what might be coming next for him.

Next week we’ll visit  some of the other places around Hong Kong where Shepherd spends his time, including Jimmy’s KItchen, one of his favorite restaurants.

####

Don’t forget that my publisher is now promoting the coming arrival of A WORLD OF TROUBLE in bookstores all around Asia by very substantially reducing the prices of the e-book editions of both of the previously published Jack Shepherd novels.

The first Jack Shepherd novel, LAUNDRY MAN, is now just $.99 for Kindle, Nook, and most other e-readers. And the second Jack Shepherd novel, KILLING PLATO, is now just $2.99.

As far as I know, this deal is only going to be offered for another week or two, so if you’ve been meaning to pick up either LAUNDRY MAN or KILLING PLATO for your e-reader or recommend it to someone else, this is certainly the right time. Here are the links to the sites where you can both books:

LAUNDRY MAN

Kindle US and international
Kindle UK
Nook
iBooks
Smashwords

KILLING PLATO

Kindle US and international
Kindle UK
Nook
iBooks
Smashwords

I know that Amazon and other booksellers sometimes add an additional dollar or two to the price for buyers in certain countries, so I can’t guarantee that your price will actually be $.99 if you’re in, say, Hong Kong. Maybe it will be and maybe it won’t be. The hidden charges seem to be almost random, and are sometimes imposed on one title but not on another. Sadly, my publisher has no control at all over those extra charges. We’re not told where the extra charges are imposed, or why, and Amazon is even cagey about admitting to us that they are imposed at all. I’m really sorry that those of you outside the US are sometimes penalized when you buy my books but it’s simply out of my control.

Stay cool. See you next week.

This week I’ve got an announcement, an interview, and some abject begging for you.

But first, I just couldn’t resist including this photograph. I was in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago and spotted this tram coming toward me as I crossed Connaught Road just behind the Mandarin Hotel.

Now Thailand may be famous for a great many things, but one of those things is definitely not ’Trusted Quality,’ at least not with respect to the kinds of products the Thai Trade Mission no doubt was thinking of when they had their new slogan painted on a Hong Kong tram. As for some of things Thailand does produce that might actually qualify for a tag line like that…well, uh, never mind.

#### 

Okay, so here comes the announcement…

A WORLD OF TROUBLE, the third of my Jack Shepherd novels, is at the printers and the first copies will ship to bookstores in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand within the next few days. E-book editions of A WORLD OF TROUBLE will be available for Kindle and Nook by the end of March, and for other e-readers shortly thereafter.

As a temporary promotion for A WORLD OF TROUBLE, and in order to get new readers interested in my Jack Shepherd novels, the publisher has drastically lowered the prices of the first two books in the series. For the next couple of weeks, LAUNDRY MAN will be just $.99 and KILLING PLATO will be just $2.99.

You’re absolutely the first to hear about these reduced prices for LAUNDRY MAN and KILLING PLATO since they won’t be announced publicly for a few days yet. So if you have been meaning to pick up one or the other for your e-reader, you’re in luck.

And if you know someone you think might enjoy my Jack Shepherd books, please forward this email to them to tell them about the promotion.

LAUNDRY MAN for just $.99 and KILLING PLATO for just $2.99? Go ahead. Tell a friend. They’ll thank you later.

Of course, I know that some of you in certain countries outside of North America and Europe sometimes get changed an extra $2 by Amazon when you buy an e-book from them, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Heck, I’m not even supposed to know about it. Amazon refused to admit to me that they were doing it, and they certainly don’t report that extra $2 to my publisher as revenue they’ve collected from you. I wonder where it goes….

####

Now we get to the abject begging part of our program. I need a favor from you…

My first two Jack Shepherd books — LAUNDRY MAN and KILLING PLATO — have embarrassingly few reviews on the Kindle stores and on Barnes and Noble’s Nook store. The reviews that are up there are terrific, but there just aren’t very many of them. On Amazon US, LAUNDRY MAN has only 4 reviews and KILLING PLATO has just 6. On Amazon UK and iBooks, neither book has any reviews or any ratings at all. On Barnes and Noble’s Nook store, LAUNDRY MAN has 1 review and KILLING PLATO has none. When bestsellers generally have hundreds of reviews and even sparsely read self-published books frequently have dozens, the lack of reviews for LAUNDRY MAN and KILLING PLATO is really making me look bad.

Now I know that many of you have read either LAUNDRY MAN or KILLING PLATO, or both. Those two titles have sold a heck of a lot of copies over the years and I’ve talked to a lot of you about them. I just can’t figure out why so few people have reviewed them online.

That’s why, right now, I really need you to tell other people that you’ve read the first two Jack Shepherd books and, I hope, liked them.

It’s not necessary for you to have bought my book from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or iBooks to post a review on their sites. Maybe you bought a used copy in Katmandu. I don’t care, and neither do they. If you’ve ever bought any book from Amazon US, you can still post reviews of my books there. The same goes for Amazon UK, where you have to post your review separately since it won’t automatically carry over from Amazon US. As far as I know, the rules are the same for Barnes and Noble’s Nook and iBooks. You can post if you’ve ever bought anything from them, not just the book you’re writing about.

Can I ask you to take a minute to help me build up the online lists of reviews for LAUNDRY MAN and KILLING PLATO? I really hate to see the new Jack Shepherd book hit the Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and other e-reader stores when it looks to anyone browsing my titles as if nobody read the first two books in the series.

Here are the links to the pages on each bookstore where my titles are featured. You can post reviews directly from these pages, although of course you will have to log into your own account with the vendor when you do so that they can determine you are a real person who is eligible to post reviews and not just an automated bot.

Wait…you’re not just an automated bot, are you?

LAUNDRY MAN
 


Kindle US and international


Kindle UK


Nook


iBooks


Smashwords

 


KILLING PLATO
 


Kindle US and international


Kindle UK


Nook


iBooks


Smashwords

Okay, thanks for hearing me out. No more begging for reviews. Well…not for a while, at least.

####

So, finally, we get to the interview…

Yesterday, the Stickman Weekly — unquestionably the most popular online column about Thailand since it has nearly 50,000 readers every week, a circulation equivalent to that of the Bangkok Post — published a long interview with me. The interview delved into a number of things about my books that I haven’t yet gotten around to mentioning in these ‘Letter from Asia,’ including some tales about the movie rights to the books.

You can find the interview online HERE.

I know a lot of you have probably already read the interview already, but if you haven’t, and if you’re at all interested in my books, I think you’ll find the conversation interesting.

####

Next week, I promise I’ll cut out all this crap about book publicity tours and interviews and book reviews on Amazon and start giving you an advance peek at A WORLD OF TROUBLE.

Jack Shepherd is living in Hong Kong now, having been fired by Chulalongkorn University at the end of KILLING PLATO, and I’ve got some pictures for you of the part of the city where he lives and works. I’ll also tell you a little bit about what he’s doing there in Hong Kong in this, the third novel in the Jack Shepherd series, and why his connection to Thailand hasn’t been cut nearly as cleanly as he might think it has.

Stay cool. See you next week.