For the Dead - A Poke Rafferty Thriller

Zusatztext 91729877 Informationen zum Autor Timothy Hallinan Klappentext After seven years in Bangkok, American travel writer Poke Rafferty finally feels settled: his family is about to grow larger, and his adopted Thai daughter, Miaow, seems to have settled in at junior high school. All that is endangered when Miaow helps her boyfriend buy a stolen iPhone that contains photographs of two disgraced police officers, both of whom have been murdered. As Miaow's carefully constructed personal life falls apart, Rafferty discovers that the murders are part of a conspiracy that reaches the top rungs of Bangkok law enforcement, and beyond. Miaow's discovery threatens the entire family-and if that's not enough, in order to survive, they may ultimately have to depend on someone who has already betrayed them. 1 The River     The river is wider than it should be and it’s the wrong color. Instead of its usual reddish brown, a gift of the topsoil it steals from the rice farmers upstream, it’s a cold, metallic gray-green, the color of the sea beneath clouds. And it runs faster than it should, fast enough to whip up curving rills of white foam where the water quickens over the tops of stones.         Although the sky is a bottomless, unblemished blue, the girl can’t find the sun. She sits on the green bank, shadowless, watching the river’s flow, not knowing her name and not very bothered by it. Several names come to her, and they all seem to be hers, but she knows she only has one. If she could see her face, she thinks, if she knew how old she is, she’d know which name to accept.         The landscape offers no clues or indications. There’s nothing but the stunted forest with its ragged, disorderly trees and waist-high scrub, and the wide gray-green river, flowing swiftly toward her and then past her, leaving her here, a stationary dot on its passage to the sea.         A pale distance away, the river bends to the right and disappears behind a faded green treeline. All that water rounding the bend, resolutely silent, unaware of her. But why shouldn’t it be unaware of her? She’s barely aware of herself.         Experimentally, she examines her right hand, holding it just above the ground with its tangled green cover. Her hand is so sharp that it seems closer than it is, and she can see the faint blue map of veins beneath her skin pulse with each heartbeat. She feels the blood rushing through them, a tiny river within her, and that thought draws her eyes back to the larger river, and then upstream to the bend where it vanishes.         And she knows—with no feeling of discovery, but as though she has always known—that up there, out of sight, on the far side of the bend, the river is bringing something to her. Bearing it, whatever it is, on its unstoppable flow.         And it’s something enormous.         She thinks, “I need to talk to my mother.” And then the day dims and the girl shivers and realizes that she’s grown suddenly cold.   * For the thousandth time since they began to live together, Rose wakes up shivering and asks herself why Poke puts the air-con on high every night, turning their bedroom into a refrigerator, and then steals every blanket on the bed so he can build a fort against the cold he has created.         My mother? she thinks as a tiny scrap of her dream surfaces like a fragment of mosaic and then sinks again. Why would my mother come to me? Or did she? Mostly, it seems, mostly, it was the river.         Rose never knowingly ignores a dream. Automatically, she checks the time, which is announced in the sleepy-blue numerals of the bedside clock as 2:46. Too late to call. If something is wrong, there’s nothing she can do now. She’ll call first thing in the morning, make Poke bring her the phone while his silly, fancy coffee is dripping and the water is heating for her Nescafé.<...

About the author

Timothy Hallinan has been nominated for the Edgar, Nero, Shamus, and Macavity awards. He is the author of seventeen widely praised books, including The Fear Artist, The Hot Countries, Crashed, Little Elvises, The Fame Thief, and Herbie’s Game. After years of working in the television and music industries, he now writes full-time. He divides his time between California and Thailand.

Product details

• Authors: Timothy Hallinan
• Publisher: Soho Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.09.2015
• EAN: 9781616956165
• ISBN: 978-1-61695-616-5
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 190 mm x 25 mm
• Series: A Poke Rafferty Novel; A Poke Rafferty Novel; Poke Rafferty Novel
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense