Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
Crime Wave Press, Asia’s only crime fiction imprint, has published its 34th title, The Gingerbread Houses, a taut, nasty British Noir thriller from Ben Jones, his fourth title with us. Ben previously published Skewered and other London Cruelties, Pennies for Charon and my personal favorite, the totally outrageous, twisted The Devil’s Brew. Crime Wave Press […]
Continue ReadingVery proud to have my latest short story, the Morocco set To Kill An Arab, in A Time for Violence, a love letter to the great anthologies of yesteryear, assembling stories by a variety of talents, connected by a singular theme. Other authors include fellow Crime Wave Press stalwarts Tony Knighton, Elka Ray, Andy Rausch […]
Continue ReadingA great review of The Monsoon Ghost Image by a retired FBI agent. What if Graham Greene had written extreme horror? Interesting thought. True, the carnage of cold war detente may have produced some hideous and bloody results, but instead of The Third Man, we could have ended up with something akin to a Tom […]
Continue ReadingAfter lagging regional competitors, Thai capital invests in heritage accommodations. My latest with Laure Siegel in the Nikkei Asian Review. In downtown Bangkok, hardly a week goes by without a soft opening for a high-rise hotel offering a plush but hardly unique experience. With around 35 million visitors a year the Thai capital is a […]
Continue ReadingI’ve been reviewing hotels for the Daily Telegraph for the past four years, mostly in Thailand, but also in Cambodia, Laos and India. To date I’ve visited more than a 100 hotels for the paper. More often than not I manage to combine this job with other assignments in the same locations (it’s not uncommon […]
Continue ReadingMy latest story with Laure Siegel in the Nikkei Asian Review on how highways, bridges and dams flow from Chinese infrastructure bonanza in Nepal. A hard truck ride to the Nepal/China/Tibet border, the proverbial end of the world. Some 140 km to the north of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure plan is in […]
Continue ReadingLaura Snook, Cambodia’s high priestess of punk, ace magazine editor, and a fantastic, sensitive and kind woman and all round Rocknroll lady. What a huge loss. I wrote the following text for her remembrance concert in Phnom Penh in March. Laura, I’d like to quote from a novel by John D MacDonald: I get the […]
Continue ReadingMy latest for The Nikkei Asian Review on the plight of the indigenous people of the Andaman Islands in India – The world should reconsider forced assimilation of isolated communities. In late November, an American missionary attempted to bring Christianity to the Sentinelese people, a remote community in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an Indian […]
Continue ReadingMy first encounter with Scott Nicholson was as formidable and extraordinary as our 19 year friendship. I found him sitting in the surf on a remote beach in the Andaman Islands, in 2000. I was about to go swimming and we said hello to each other, the way two westerners do three thousand miles from […]
Continue ReadingMy piece on my return to Nepal three years after I was caught up in the devastating earthquake of 2015 and the journey to overcome my sense of trauma is published in the Mekong Review, Southeast Asia’s literary journal, next month.
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