Mark wrote:
> Plunder of the Sun by David Dodge, a Hard Case Crime
reissue.
And the film, reissued on DVD a few years ago, is pretty good
too, with a screenplay by Jonthan Latimer. It stars Glenn
Ford as Al Colby, an insurance adjuster down on his luck in
Havana, and it's got some great location shots of ancient
Mexican ruins and some imaginative use of stark sunlight and
deep shadows, particularly among the ruins,A big part of
Moore's charm is his unerring eye for the intricacies of not
just the Thai culture but also the Thai psyche, and the
curious demimonde of the expat community, caught forever in
the tug-of-war between East and West. Calvino's world is one
of foreign correspondents, diplomats, business executives,
English language teachers, adventurers, drunks, con artists,
whores and hustlers, all unwilling, unable or uninterested in
going home. From what I've heard, he captures the sights and
sounds and the lights of Bangkok's nightlife particularly
well. that adds a nice noirish touch. By coincidence, I
watched it (again) just last night.
In the books he's an American private eye based in Mexico
City, and his investigations take him throughout Central and
South America. In the first Colby novel, THE LONG ESCAPE, he
tracks a runaway husband from Mexico to Santiago, Chile; in
PLUNDER OF THE SUN (which is quite different from the film),
he is hired to recover lost Inca treasure in Peru; and, in
THE RED TASSEL, Colby faces off against saboteurs and
witch-doctors at a silver mine in the high altitudes of the
Bolivian Andes.
And Christopher Moore's excellent Vinnie Calvino series,
about a transplanted New Yorker working as a private eye, is
set in Bangkok. The ninth in the series, THE RISK OF
INFIDELITY, is just out, in fact.
A big part of Moore's charm is his unerring eye for the
intricacies of not just Thai culture but also the Thai
psyche, and the curious demimonde of the ex-pat community,
caught forever in the tug-of-war between East and West.
Calvino's world is one of foreign correspondents, diplomats,
business executives, English language teachers, adventurers,
drunks, con artists, whores and hustlers, all unwilling,
unable or uninterested in going home. He supposedly nails\
the sights and sounds and the lights of Bangkok's nightlife
particularly well.
Kevin Burton Smith www.thrillingdetective.com
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