A Good Death
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"A first rate mystery, beautifully crafted, fast-paced, and populated with the most vivid (and at times seamy) characters… A bravura debut!" --Douglas Preston, #1 bestselling co-author of the Pendergast series of novels
A nail-biting debut mystery that plunges readers into the seamy side streets of late-90s Bangkok and across the untamed mountains of the Lao-Vietnam border, hot on the heels of an alluring woman who's officially dead – unless she's masterminded a half-million-dollar life-insurance scam
An expertly crafted debut, A GOOD DEATH introduces Sebastian Damon, a sharp-witted though struggling Boston PI who catches an intriguing case. Linda Watts is a beautiful, talented Southeast Asian refugee with a promising career in finance—or she was, until she turned up dead, the victim of a heroin OD, in a cheap Bangkok guest house. Her death seemed straightforward to the Thai authorities, but her insurance company isn't buying it. They send Sebastian halfway around the world to investigate—where he finds himself confounded and completely out of place chasing faint leads through the broken, bewildering streets of Thailand's teeming capital.
An award-winning journalist with decades of experience traveling in and reporting on Southeast Asia, Christopher R. Cox takes readers on a vibrant journey through a corrupt police bureaucracy, a network of steamy Bangkok nightclubs and grimy hostels to a place where you can you feel the humid air and smell the stir-fried street food. Along the way, Sebastian finds romance as he falls for a captivatingly mysterious woman and camaraderie with his father's wise-cracking old Special Forces wingman -- an expat who can navigate Bangkok's chaotic underbelly and the wild mountains of Laos with equal aplomb. For Sebastian, it's the assignment of a lifetime, a chase that will lead him to a long-buried truth at the heart of all the dark lies, a quest that will change him forever in this richly imagined, compelling debut perfect for fans of John Burdett.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Those fond of exotic foreign locales will welcome journalist Cox's mystery debut, set in Southeast Asia. At the behest of an insurance company, fledgling Boston PI Sebastian Damon travels to Bangkok, Thailand, to verify the death of policy holder Linda Watts, but his real assignment is to prove that Watts, a Laotian refugee who became a successful banker in the U.S. and recently changed her beneficiary from her fianc to her uncle in Providence, R.I., is still alive. While alien customs and police corruption present obstacles, Damon manages to connect with a helpful American ex-pat, Sam Honeyman, who served with his army vet father in Vietnam. Damon and Honeyman's quest for the truth about Watts eventually takes them into the jungles of Laos, where unexploded American bombs from the Vietnam War are as dangerous as mountain tribesmen. Vivid descriptive prose helps compensate for the loose plot and sketchy characters.
