Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller (Poke Rafferty Thrillers)
In Hallinan's nicely paced third Bangkok thriller to feature writer Poke Rafferty (afterThe Fourth Water), Poke wins a bet to write the biography of Khun Pan, a major-league bad guy, after a dispute with Pan in a poker game. When local papers run big stories about the deal, a phone caller threatens Poke, his wife and his daughter if he goes ahead with the project. Soon afterward, Poke is forced into a car by gun-wielding men who demand he write the book, but based on interviews with people on a set list. Poke's efforts to keep himself alive amid competing interests move the plot along.&Acirc;&nbsp;His sangfroid in the face of serious peril, reminiscent of Cary Grant's inNorth by Northwest, may strike some readers as out of place in a book that opens with a heartrending scene of a thug instructing a reluctant girl how to become a professional beggar by pinching an infant to make it cry to gain more sympathy.(Sept.)Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.