'The Corruptionist' is the 11th novel in the Vincent Calvino series by Thailand-based author Christopher G. Moore.
Calvino works as a private investigator out of an office building that also houses a massage parlour. He works on his own, but gets minor help from some other locals, mostly visitors of a bar at Washington Square. The premise that a foreigner has a free hand investigating crimes in Thailand, is a bit odd. However, Calvino has a good friend in the Thai police force, who goes by the farang name of Coronel Pratt. Pratt has to help out quite a few times, mostly as a protector, and Calvino makes ample use from his services. However, Pratt is not always quite able to protect Calvino from his overt stubborness in going against all odds, whatever the costs.
Calvino is mainly involved in finding missing persons, and checking out girls friends of foreigners, who are rightly not always convinced of their partners' faithfullness. Nevertheless, he invariably ends up being involved in solving crimes, that threathen the future of the whole of Thailand.
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The Corruptionist by Christopher G. Moore.
Front image by Chris Coles. |
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As of this novel, the social status of Calvino has changed. He has come into some serious money. As a result he is able to just buy the whole building where his office is located, he moves to live in a nice apartment overlooking Ratchada Lake (along Asoke Road), can pay whoever helps him generously, and gets some attention from the opposite sex. Being wealthy, he does not really have to do his investigative job anymore, and he ponders retirement.
Anyway, Calvino is hired by an American businessman, who has invested with a Thai partner in an agricultural project to develop genetically engineered rice in Thailand. However, said investor (named Brandon Sawyer) is at odds with his brother, who runs the company in the U.S.A. Marshall Sawyer rather would get out of the business altogether. He sends a female lawyer to help convince Brandon.
However, Brandon (a stereotype continously drunk farang, who can not stay away from the company of freely available young women), is not willing to give in to his brother.
As the story develops various characters end up dead. Achara, the local business partner of Brandon, is devoured by his 'domestic' lions no less. Brandon himself ends up killed by some Taser-type device.
Calvino himself, who can not help himself trying to find out what is going on (against the advice of this good friend Pratt), escapes death narrowly on two occasions. On the last occasion, his new local girlfriend is killed instead while trying to start Calvino's car. His friend, coronel Pratt gets shot, likely as a warning to Calvino.
It turns out that behind all this is a Chinese businessman, who is determined to guide Thai politics, by helping the election of a friendly general. He also plans to control Thai industry by buying up local Thai companies. On top of that, he wants to develop new weaponry (such as the above mentioned killing Taser gun). The story has Calvino taking a trip visiting China, to find out the background of his Chinese enemy. We revealed a lot, but will not reveal the final (rather weak) plot of the story.
While no real names of people or parties are mentioned, the background of the whole story is formed by recent political developments in Thailand, namely the time of the occupation of Government House by 'Yellow Shirts' in the middle and end of 2008. Moore has set his latest novels into the time frame of political events in Thailand. Not sure whether this will be still very relevant a few years from now.
[More about current political developments in Thailand]
Christopher G. Moore has to be commended for bringing up the 'War on Drugs' that occurred at the beginning of 2003, when Thaksin Shinawatra was prime minister. He narrates the story of at least three victims of this War on Drugs throughout the novel.
As a background regarding the War on Drugs, we quote here from 'Thaksin' by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (recommended non-fiction if you are interested in recent Thai politics).
" From 1 February (2003) onwards, the nightly television news opened with clip after clip of prone dead bodies. The newscasters announced that they were drug dealers who had been killed by other drug dealers to prevent them giving information to the authorities. This kind of killing was named 'kha tat ton' roughly 'kill to cutt and remove', often translated as preemptive or silencing killings. For two months, the cumulative death toll was announced daily, increasing at an average daily rate of thirty. At the close of the three months, some 2,637 had been killed, of which officially 68 had been shot by the police in 'self defence'.(Bangkok Post, December 2009)
.... The forensic expert, Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunan, noted that the bodies were often found with a small packet of ya ba pills (amphetamines), often not noticed at first, that the police resisted forensic examinations, and that the authorities seemed to be able to turn the killings on or off at will. Several were killed soon after having reported themselves to the police. (Bangkok Post, February 2003) "
While we are critical of his endeavours, we always read the latest book by C.G. Moore. For both old hands, and people who have never been to Thailand, the author always offers some new insights into Thai society. For readers familiar with Thailand, it is always satisfying to have someone describe places or situations you know about.
Moore is at his best when he describes the colorfull and confusing scenes along Bangkok's roads. He also throws in Thai proverbs into his stories, the only Bangkok-based author confident enough to do so.
Moore's writing however is not consistently good. Some chapters in his books are really splendid. On other occasions, it is necessary to reread certain paragraphs to figure out what the hell is going on. It appears as if certain sentences have been copied from other locations and dropped into the wrong place during editing. Since some chapters offer a really fluid read, it is quite obvious that C. G. Moore can do better overal. It looks a bit like the author is overly interested in writing his story, without being duely concerned in rereading and editing it himself. At least, this latest book 'The Corruptionist' does not feature the many typing errors, so common in previous novels.
We know this latest paragraph is a bit pompous, for an amateur book reviewer. Certainly, anyone will be able to find some linguistic and grammatical errors on this page, but at least we have the excuse of not being a native English speaker.
Websites of English-language writers in Bangkok, and online bookstores.
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