What's in this book
- Timothy Hallinan's 2012 Poke Rafferty novel - fifth entry in the Bangkok-set crime series
- Canonical contemporary American expatriate-in-Asia crime fiction
- 320 pages of patient Bangkok-procedural construction and contemporary Thai-political texture",
- Series continues across the broader Poke Rafferty catalog including The Hot Countries
- Victor Bevine audiobook is the definitive audio production
- For readers of the broader Poke Rafferty series, the Junior Bender series, and contemporary American expatriate crime
Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
The Fear Artist is the fifth Poke Rafferty novel from Timothy Hallinan, with the American travel writer based in Bangkok pulled into a conspiracy that begins when a dying man stumbles into him on the street and whispers an incomplete sentence before being shot. The case unspools through Hallinan's carefully rendered Bangkok geography, with the threat coming from inside the Thai security apparatus and reaching back into the Vietnam War.
Hallinan's strength in The Fear Artist is the absolute commitment to the Bangkok setting. The city geography (the soi-side eateries, the sky-train choices, the specific neighborhoods' political histories) is rendered with the kind of insider attention that comes from a writer who has spent significant time there. The villain, an aging CIA black-operations contractor named Murphy, is one of the most genuinely terrifying antagonists in recent thriller fiction. Fans of John Burdett's Sonchai Jitpleecheep mysteries or Christopher G. Moore's Vincent Calvino novels will recognize the careful Bangkok-thriller tradition Hallinan is contributing to.
Poke's family (his wife Rose and his teenage adopted daughter Miaow) get extensive page time, and the family material is essential to the book's emotional weight.
Five stars. The Fear Artist Timothy Hallinan novel is the strongest Poke Rafferty entry. Recommended for readers of literary thriller fiction set in Asia. Read in series order from A Nail Through the Heart for full payoff.
Related reads
If you liked The Fear Artist
Crashed
by Timothy Hallinan
The first Junior Bender novel. Timothy Hallinan writing an LA burglar-turned-investigator with a stolen-art crisis and a teenage daughter. One of the most underread comic-crime debuts of the 2010s.
Little Elvises
by Timothy Hallinan
The second Junior Bender novel. A 70s music-industry investigation, a senior-citizen Mafia kingpin, and Hallinan tightening every dial.
The Fame Thief
by Timothy Hallinan
The Fame Thief by Timothy Hallinan review. The 3rd Junior Bender LA comic-crime novel. A 1950s Hollywood blacklist mystery, an ensemble of nonagenarian Mafia, the series at its absolute peak.
Herbie's Game
by Timothy Hallinan
Herbie's Game by Timothy Hallinan review. The 4th Junior Bender comic-crime novel. Junior's mentor Herbie Mott dies. Hallinan's most emotionally weighty entry yet.
For the Dead
by Timothy Hallinan
For the Dead by Timothy Hallinan review. The 6th Poke Rafferty novel. A stolen phone, a dead Thai colonel, and Miaow at the center of the crisis. The series in family-thriller form.
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
More by this author