Skytrain to Murder

Rating:
Summary: The Real Deal
Review: A very well written detective novel set in Bangkok. A down and out American detective and his martial arts trained Thai girlfriend and lots of bizarre characters both Thais and foreigners living there. The author obviously knows the place. For example: "Thais are the nicest people in the world. Until they're not."

A great read and I learned a lot. If this book doesn't make you want to go to Thailand, nothing will.

Rating:
Summary: The Real Deal
Review: A very well written detective novel set in Bangkok. A down and out American detective and his martial arts trained Thai girlfriend and lots of bizarre characters both Thais and foreigners living there. The author obviously knows the place. For example: "Thais are the nicest people in the world. Until they're not."

A great read and I learned a lot. If this book doesn't make you want to go to Thailand, nothing will.

Rating:
Summary: Chandleresque Crime Novel set in Thailand
Review: I really enjoyed this one. It reminded me of the Thailand I used to know in the 80's but I never had the same exciting life as the main character, detective and part-time bar hopper, Scott Sterling. The plot involves a murdered woman and several people who might have wanted her dead. But I learned a lot about everything from slums to scuba diving and Thai dominatrixes. We didn't have cell phones and dominatrixes and a skytrain in Thailand when I was there but the writing made me feel like I was really back in Thailand. That I liked more than anything else. A fine book. One that makes me want to get back to that crazy city!

Rating:
Summary: Chandleresque Crime Novel set in Thailand
Review: I really enjoyed this one. It reminded me of the Thailand I used to know in the 80's but I never had the same exciting life as the main character, detective and part-time bar hopper, Scott Sterling. The plot involves a murdered woman and several people who might have wanted her dead. But I learned a lot about everything from slums to scuba diving and Thai dominatrixes. We didn't have cell phones and dominatrixes and a skytrain in Thailand when I was there but the writing made me feel like I was really back in Thailand. That I liked more than anything else. A fine book. One that makes me want to get back to that crazy city!

Rating:
Summary: Fast paced and exciting!
Review: Scott Sterling, an American expatriate living in Bangkok, Thailand, spends most of his time hanging out in bars and teaching scuba diving. Occasionally he uses his expertise as an ex-CIA agent by doing a little detective work, mostly following cheating spouses. His Thai girlfriend, Dao, is a boxer and an extremely jealous woman. When Lisa Avery, a blonde knockout from the States, starts hanging around, Scott begins to feel a bit uncomfortable caught between the two women.

Lisa requests a meeting with Scott, and he thinks he might get to the bottom of her odd behavior--maybe she wants to hire him for some detective work. Their meeting doesn't end as planned, and Scott leaves with many more questions about Lisa than when he started. Then Lisa turns up dead, and he makes it his mission to find out why she was killed and who killed her. There are people who would prefer Scott stay far away from the investigation. As he starts to uncover clues, he finds that Lisa was not who she appeared to be. Will Scott discover the motive for the crime and the identity of the killer before the culprit eliminates him from the equation?

SKYTRAIN TO MURDER is a brilliantly written novel. The author,Dean Barrett, a resident of Asia, delivers firsthand knowledge of what it is like to live and work in this fascinating country. Sprinkled throughout the book are funny accounts of the different bar patrons and their interactions between themselves and the locals. Scott is a well developed character and the reader has a rapport with him and his plights, even the uncomfortable ones he brings on himself.

The mystery of SKYTRAIN TO MURDER is detailed and intriguing, and will keep readers guessing until the exciting climax where all is revealed. I take it as a sign of a good mystery when I can't figure out the identity of the villain, and this novel delivers a well-crafted surprise. The dialogue is fresh and fast-paced, full of Thai cultural references, both funny and shocking at times.

One criticism I have is that a few of the things referred to in the book are unfamiliar to me, and may be unfamiliar to other readers. It would have been helpful for some commonly mentioned things to be defined, such as "bargirl" and "muay-Thai."

Overall, SKYTRAIN TO MURDER is one of the most fascinating mysteries I have read in a long time. The exotic locale coupled with captivating suspense make for a winning combination. I definitely recommend this book for all mystery lovers on your holiday shopping list--and buy a copy for yourself as a treat!

Courtesy of www.AllAboutMurder.com

Rating:
Summary: Is this better than a skytrain to the mall?
Review: Skytrain to Murder, by Dean Barrett, is a decent noir-like thriller taking place in Bangkok, Thailand. It doesn't really involve a skytrain, but it does involve a murder, so that's one for two, anyway. Barrett is known for writing Asian thrillers and Skytrain to Murder is another good example of this. Unfortunately, Barrett spends too much time giving us the flavour of the city rather than giving us an interesting tale. Atmosphere is like a spice: if you use too much of it, you drown the taste. Add to that a subplot that doesn't really seem to go anywhere and you've got a rather short, yet still padded mystery.

Scott Stirling is an ex-CIA agent from the Bangkok bureau, now living there. Short of money, he's moved into an apartment over a local bar. He teaches diving and does some detective work on the side. A beautiful blonde asks him to her apartment, supposedly to request his help, along with a good screw. When he gets there, she has decided she doesn't need his help anymore, but the screw could still go ahead if he wants. He respectfully declines, but unfortunately, she later ends up dead. Investigating the murder leads him through the seedy underside of Bangkok life, reaching all the way to the top of the business world. He's also asked to rescue a little girl who's supposed to be used as collateral in a loan-shark deal. In this quest, he's aided by his martial-arts trained girlfriend (Dao) and her family. It's too bad that she's also a suspect in the murder.

The more I think about this book, the more problems I come up with, though I do have to say that I ultimately enjoyed the book. Barrett throws in a lot of sub-plots, some of them leading to other avenues of investigation and some apparently red herrings (or, for this novel, red pufferfish). It's unusual to have whole subplots be red herrings, though, and I found that it detracted from the book. Especially bad is the rescuing of the girl. After finishing the book, I can see no reason why this was in there, other than giving us a view of his girlfriend's world. This could be fine, but we get to the spice analogy above. It overwhelms everything else. Barrett makes it seem like a big deal, but when he's finished, the only thing it really did was show how tough Dao's brother is. What's the point? He also spends a lot of time on Dao's muay-Thai martial arts match, going into heavy detail about it, punch by punch. If Dao were a major character, I could see the reason for this, but she really doesn't do much in this book. So why are we spending so much time with her?

It's also bad when the narrator draws attention to the many coincidences that permeate a book. Near the end, Stirling (the book is written in first person) comments on the unlikely string of events that led him to the predicament he was in, and how he got out of it. I think readers should probably come to that conclusion themselves, and they might be a lot more forgiving about it if they do. However, the two comments at end of the book (the one about the coincidences and then the one explaining why there's a skytrain in the title of the book) are so heavy-handed and obvious that they almost don't feel like they were written by the same writer. The rest of the prose in the book is great, reminiscent of a Sam Spade in Asia novel. It almost felt like I was watching a black and white movie.

It's a shame that there are so many structural problems, because Barrett does give us some very interesting characters. Stirling is a great main character, with a cynical outlook on life yet remaining a pretty positive guy. I almost picture him with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, ala Bogart. Barrett also provides us with quirky bit characters and interesting suspects in the murder. In fact, even Chinaman (Stirling's adopted Chinese brother who adopted that nickname, but only for a select few people to use) is intriguing. We only get a couple of glimpses of him when he calls Stirling, but I definitely would love to read a book about him. The dialogue that Barrett provides for these characters also crackles. I loved some of the exchanges in the Boots and Saddle bar between the regulars there. It really added to their character.

I didn't let the problems in Skytrain to Murder get to me until after I had finished it and thought about it. While I was reading it, I really enjoyed the prose, the characters, and the dialogue. While the plot was a bit contrived and there were too many extraneous sub-plots (especially for a 260 page book!), I was hooked from page one until I got to the end. If you turn you allow yourself to go with the flow, and if you like your thrillers with a bit of exoticism to them, then give this one a try. I'll even add an extra star for the enjoyment factor.

David Roy