This is a superbly written novel and a great read. If you are looking for a good healthy dose of crime with no grisly details withheld, look no further.
If you are familiar with Jo Nesbø or Michael Connelly, you will find the same expert craftsmanship and complex plot twists here.
Living as he does in Singapore, Jake Needham is well suited to provide a good location for the story which takes place in Singapore and Bangkok. You can feel the heat and humidity of Asia rising from the pages as he describes the architecture, people and culture of Singapore and Thailand. The story starts off with the discovery of a woman’s body on a bed in an empty suite in the Marriott Hotel. The second body is discovered in Bangkok, in a seedy apartment close to the American embassy. Both are American women and both have been beaten viciously and shot in the head, their bodies stripped naked and crudely displayed. Yet no one is really sure who or what is behind the killings whether it is international terrorism or the work of a serial killer. Inspector Samuel Tay of Singapore CID is the person assigned to the case because he is the best but Tay soon finds himself in a case that nobody seems to want him to solve , not even his superiors!
This novel is fast paced, engaging and an enjoyable read. I did find the main character a bit on the dull side sometimes. He seems to be such an intensely split character, so apparently cheerless and drab on one side and yet a woman magnet, wealthy and loved by everyone on the other. But enjoyable is the key word here and this book delivers loads of it.
4 and a half stars out of 5
Reviewed by Roger Gerald Scott, award winning published author, also published on http://rogerrgeraldscott.blogspot.no/
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Sales links to the Kindle editions of all of Jake’s books:
THE UMBRELLA MAN
THE AMBASSADOR’S WIFE
A WORLD OF TROUBLE
KILLING PLATO
LAUNDRY MAN
THE BIG MANGO
I actually chose this book to read based on the reviews that are already on Amazon. This is a pleasant and enjoyable read even if its not your normal genre or style, which for me it isn’t. At first I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy it because I don’t even know where Tuscany is and I have never been out of the United States so I was unsure if I could follow along. I am pleased to say that none of that mattered because this author very skillfully painted such wonderful images with her writing style and descriptive efforts; I fee like I have visited Italy and walked up and down that alley many times now and without the expensive airfare!
Rock Crazy is a science fiction story set in 2065 about a woman called Katie McGowan who suffers from bipolar disorder (rapid cycling). She relies heavily on her medication to survive but recently even that was failing to stop her wild mood swings and blackouts. The only cure involves the implantation of a microchip in her brain to regulate her moods but she has no desire to become, as she construes it, a robotic puppet for the rest of her life. She therefore stubbornly refuses this medical option, especially since the operation can only be performed on the moon.
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