Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon by Stephen Leather (Epub)

Description

Introducing Bob Turtledove ― Bangkok antiques dealer and part-time private eye – in a case that brings him up against Russian gangsters, hired killers and kickboxing thugs while looking for a lost Mormon in the heart of Thailand. Bangkok Bob is a brand new crime series from top-ten UK crime writer Stephen Leather and “Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon” is the first book in the series.

User’s Reviews

There is no Editorial Review for this book

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ A detective from Louisiana, with a dishy Thai wife, in the not so shiny, smiley side of Bangkok. Leather lets Bob show us the non touristy side of Thai life, the Thais, and the underworld there. The Mormon English teacher, his love for a Thai girl… all the ingredients for what seems like a Romeo and Juliet; but you’d be wrong to thing that. We get shown how discos operate, how human life is (not) valued. All this without cloying sentiment, “I Love Bangkok” plugs for tourism, just honest brutality in a way that the travel brochures never show you. Some humour, some twists and all in beautiful, seedy Thailand.I’m planning a vacation there.

⭐ Great book. Required reading for sex tourists, old retirees looking to move to SE Asia and the just plain curious. The private detective character gives the unvarnished view of what real Thais think of hookers and their johns, and it ain’t pretty. Nice ending, everyone gets what they deserve. Including AIDS.

⭐ Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon focuses on Bob Turtledove, a former New Orleans police detective who now resides in Thailand where he sells antiques, and his attempts to help a family find their son who has fallen out of communication with his worried parents. The novel is an entertaining and quick read, and Leather does a great job of managing a couple of subplots while never failing to continue to advance the focus of the story. The ending is neither predictable nor outrageous and it’s quite easy for the reader to quickly identify with and care about the main character. I’m hopeful that Leather will revisit Turtledove at some point in the future with a sequel.

⭐ Loved the character of Bob. He’s genuine with a side of sarcasm and a squeeze of lime juice and irony. Procedural plot twists are clever and insights of Thai life are spot on. Leather can write and I hope to meet him at Checkpoint 99 in the spring.

⭐ Mystery-thrillers with a Bangkok setting seem to be a whole sub-genre: there’s Timothy Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty series (which I love), John Burdett a great writer), Christopher G. Moore (who I gather is the granddaddy of them all), and more. (Incidentally, at a bit of a tangent, if you want to go a little beyond Bangkok while staying in Southeast Asia, try Colin Cotterill’s multiple series – what’s the plural of series, anyway, serieses?).I only recently became aware of Stephen Leather’s existence, and this is the first of his books that I’ve read. I picked this one from his many, many offerings (the lad is fecund in a way that would please the author of Genesis 1: “Go forth and multiply,” said the Lord, and by golly he has!) because of the Bangkok setting – I have a personal fondness for the region. (Speaking of which, is anyone writing anything set in Rangoon or Phnom Penh or Ho Chi Minh? Let me know if you are). Here’s my assessment:1. Initial reaction: The story opens with a chapter describing a traffic jam. Not, you might think, the most gripping of ways to open. But, and this is important, it builds the atmosphere: great poverty and great wealth meet side by side in the traffic, and great moral carelessness (or amorality if you like) meets great social injustice. (Sounds like New York, doesn’t it?) And so the stage is set. And yes, I wanted to keep on reading, which is what a first chapter (page, paragraph, sentence) should do. Ultimately, it’s about bums on seats and a reader who’ll come back for more. (Or Morre, if he’s reading Christopher G. – sorry, couldn’t resist).2. Characters: For me, a novel MUST be character driven. Setting is important (the book must create its world), and plot (ho-hum, might come back tomorrow…or not), but without engaging characters you’ve lost me. The hero of Bob is Bob Turtledove (um, Stephen, I’m sure you had your reasons, but Turtledove?????). He runs an antiques business, and sleuths in a private capacity. Now let me say right here that this is where Southeast Asian settings have it all over US or UK ones: in our world there are NO private sleuths. Not investigating major crimes. The reason is that they’re all dead. They got shot long ago. Or arrested. Murders and kidnappings are for the police. In SEA it’s a different story. I actually know a real-life private sleuth in Cambodia. But that’s another story. Anyway, Bob runs a business, and the US embassy sometimes sends him people with problems that the embassy can’t solve. That’s just about everything in Real Life – embassies, contrary to poluar opinion, are not there to solve your problems. You get a problem, they’ll visit you in jail after it’s over. That’s the fact. Anyway, it makes for a great and genuine mise-en-scene.I was talking about Bob. He’s engaging, likeable, and has a life. We care about Bob. We care about Bob’s battle with a colonoscopy. We even care that Bob gets kidnapped by thugs and taken to meet a mysterious Thai honcho who refuses to show his face. That’s nice.In addition to Bob there’s a whole host of minor characters, all convincingly realised, ranging from English teachers in a shabby school (Eglish teachers occupy the very lowest rung of the expat social ladder, fact), to Thais in mansions living on incomes that most Americans will only ever dream of. So on characters I’m ok.3. Plot: I don’t intend to give the plot away, but it involves a Mormon boy who’s gone missing. He came for a holiday and decided to stay for … what? That’s what his parents would like to know, and what they hire Bob to find out. (They went to the embassy first, and the embassy, would you believe, told them to go to the police! I mean, what for do we pay our taxes? Why isn’t the ambassador out there trawling the streets and ricefields looking for the lad? These are the thoughts of every American). From that point on (I mean the point at which Bob gets his orders – chapter 2, right after the traffic jam) everything moves very cleanly. Not a lot of suspense (if you want suspense, try Moore and Burdett), but a good, clean read.On the way we meet a lot of Bangkok. And it’s real, I can vouch for that. It’s absorbing, it’s instructive even, and it’s a Great Read.Buy this book, you’ll be so glad you did.

⭐ Good book about Bangkok. Bought for personal reading.

⭐ Great book!!! Couldn’t stop reading. If you’ve been to Thailand you’ll appreciate it. I don’t leave reviews often, this is a good book.

⭐ This was good – I had read something else by the author that I quite liked, but this was entirely different, showing his versatility, I suppose. The plot was okay, I’ve read other books set in Thailand and I like the setting. I didn’t quite buy that the detective was originally from New Orleans. Perhaps if I were not familiar with NO myself – still, it’s a nice enough book.

⭐ Different genre from Stephen’s usual thrillers. Insights to LOS, good prose especially on self reflections (succinctly put).Only grouse: Some poor proof reading evident on 3rd party pronouns ie sHe’sMy re-read from some years back, but still topical of Thailand’s foibles and social hierarchy.

⭐ My wife and I both enjoyed this. I found it particularly interesting, having spent a year in Thailand in the army in the early 70s. I’m sure that the country, like the rest of the world, has changed a whole lot since then. Interesting that even though I spent the time there I had never heard Thailand called “the Land Of Smiles”. But, it fits very well. Summit

Keywords

Free Download Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon in Epub format
Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon Epub Free Download
Download Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon 2011 Epub Free
Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon 2011 Epub Free Download
Download Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon Epub
Free Download Ebook Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon