Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
“The Plain of Jars, what it’s a symbol of, is how those people on the vague frontiers, those people in the Third World, those people we never see, we never know about, we never hear, can be vaporised, wiped off the face of the earth without people back here even knowing about it.” My obituary […]
Continue ReadingAs my publishing imprint Crime Wave Press has been invited to this year’s Georgetown Literary Festival in Malaysia, literary reviewer Umapagan Ampikaipakan interviews me for The Business Station. The publisher of a Hong Kong based fiction imprint (the company endeavors to publish the best new crime novels, novellas, and short story collections to readers around […]
Continue ReadingThe country’s tourism sector is taking a hit following a high-profile murder case and a bungled police response. My report in last week’s The Diplomat.
Continue ReadingThe Man with the Golden Mind, the second Detective Maier Mystery, published by Exhibit A Books, gets reviewed by Kevin Cummings in The Chiang Mai City News. Vater has fine-tuned his craft. The writing is tighter than The Cambodian Book of the Dead (Exhibit A 2013) although still on the darker and more violent side of crime […]
Continue ReadingThe Podcast I did back in June on my new novel The Man with the Golden Mind, the second Detective Maier Mystery has had more than 17.000 listens. Thanks very much to Stuart Beaton at The Small Picture Podcasts for the great interview. Listen to the full podcast here.
Continue ReadingCheck out this new short film by photographer Hans Kemp on sak yant, Thailand’s sacred tattoos. Music by Keith Nolan. TIME Magazine Review (Asia Edition) Luck of the Draw By Andrew Marshall Monday, May 23 Read more: time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2071020,00.html#ixzz1MpMZ1QpH The introduction to Sacred Skin, Tom Vater and Aroon Thaewchatturat’s new tribute to Thailand’s sak yant, or […]
Continue Reading“There are plenty of unique, crazy and offbeat characters that fill this novel, and the author has a keen eye for detail. The part of this story that took place in the Blue Parrot is one of my favorites, and is an excellent example of how the author sets a scene that sucks the reader […]
Continue ReadingI have just been on an early research trip for the second edition of my Moon Angkor Cambodia guide, first published in 2011. Cambodia has come a long way since then, the country is a little better well off and the poor are not quite as desperate as they were a decade ago, but the […]
Continue ReadingI just wrote a new article on Thailand’s sacred tattoos in the Nikkei Asian Review. Photographs by Aroon Thaewchatturat.
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