While zombies never existed, in Haiti or anywhere else, vampires have, if not quite as Bram Stoker and Anne Rice described them. They do kill and suck blood from their victims, and some even sleep in caskets. But the sun doesn't bother them, they don't turn into bats and a wooden stake through the heart isn't necessary to kill them.
THE SIAMESE CONNECTION by Jim Newport 300 pp, 2011 Willat paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 450 baht
A number of authors enjoy penning stories about vampires, werewolves, zombies, devils in human form, with or without a tail, aware that there are readers morbidly fascinated by those creatures. Film-makers with special effects lead the field. Still, readers and viewers who regard themselves as rational laugh them off.
This reviewer was working through the night as is my wont at my desk in the editorial room of the old Bangkok World in 1967 when the editor-in-chief burst through the door, announcing that Jim Thompson had disappeared in the Cameron Highlands. I was the only one present when he exclaimed: "What a story! What a story!"
Truer words were never spoken. Despite extensive searches by the Malaysian authorities and others over the following days, months, years neither hide nor hair was found of the American, Thailand's most famous resident expat, the "Silk King". I'd not met him in person during the two years I was here before his disappearance.
Conjecture regarding what had happened ran high. A tiger pulled him into the jungle. He was kidnapped. Aliens lifted him, etc. In The Siamese Connection, fourth in his The Vampire of Siam series, US author Jim Newport offers his view, not entirely original.
It was no secret that Jim Thompson had been an OSS agent during World War II. To hear the author tell it, he was shot by the vengeful Japanese Black Dragon Society. How the body was disposed of is unclear. The vampire in the series, Ramonne Delacroix, around for 150 years, becomes impresario of the Oriental Hotel's Bamboo Bar, was Thompson's friend.
Newport clearly knows Bangkok and several of his characters are real people. He's an easy read. It will take years before he becomes an accomplished storyteller.
The Mafia’s revenge
DEAD MAN’S GRIP by Peter James 504 pp, 2011 Pan paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 352 baht
It was an accident, one that might have been avoided had each of the people involved been more alert, but they were mulling over their respective problems and it had happened so fast. As a result, there was a death. The drivers were unsure which had hit the US cyclist on the English road.
Likely as not the woman driver with traces of alcohol in her blood? Or was it the truck driver, groggy from lack of sleep. Or the stolen van driver, with a prison record? Thus Dead Man's Grip opens. It's up to Sussex's major crimes unit, headed by Pol DSupt Roy Grace to unravel. He's the literary creation of Peter James and this is the seventh in the Roy Grace series.
Though each of the crime thrillers is self-contained, Grace is better understood by those who read the previous books. As is expected in crime fiction, the writers devote as much space to the personal lives of the sleuths as to the cases they solve. Grace had married Sandy who could neither conceive nor accept that his profession came first in his affections.
Sandy walked out and disappeared. He since took up with Cleo, now pregnant. When not pillowing her, Grace learns that the young tourist had been cycling on the wrong side of the road, making him as much to blame as anyone for his own death. Not that his parents accept this for one minute. And being American Mafia, they want revenge.
They put out a contract on all the drivers. Tooth, ex-special forces, a psychopath accepts for a million dollars. The only provision is that they suffer first. In the UK, he performs his work with ruthless efficiency. The woman driver, Carly, a widowed mother, he saves for last. Tooth kidnaps her 12-year-old son Tyler and she becomes a nervous wreck. Grace couldn't prevent the first two horrendous murders. Can he save the mother and the boy? The author has the antagonists playing head games, each grudgingly admiring the other's intelligence and cunning.
Young Tyler is clever is his own right, but his attempts to escape are fruitless. The reader is asked to believe that not police work but the detective's intuition save the day. At the finish, Tooth may or may not have drowned. And Sandy reappears. The next book in the series should tell us more.
