Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu is out in a new paperback edition with Next Chapter. ‘The Devil’s Road To Kathmandu’ is a tense, fast paced and kaleidoscopic pulp thriller, following the lives of two generations of drifters who become embroiled in a saga of sex, drugs and murder on the road between London and the […]
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My very first novel, The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, first published by Dragon’s Mouth Press (HK) in 2006, then republished by Crime Wave Press (HK) in 2013, then published in Spanish by Xplora Editorial in 2014, has got a new and wonderful lease of life. Next Chapter Publishing are putting out a newly edited edition […]
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I’ve been interviewed by German travel magazine TRAVELBOOK about my 2003 encounter in Kathmandu with 1970s serial killer Charles Sobhraj, currently the subject of a BBC/Netflix series called The Serpent. German speakers, check out this podcast/article on the Bikini Killer.
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It’s thought that for every one-hundred people, at least one of them will be a psychopath. My friend Richard S. Ehrlich and I are both featured in this podcast about psychopaths….. Listen to the full Podcast here.
Continue ReadingIn December 2003, Central Jail in the Nepali capital Kathmandu was everything one might expect from a prison in a developing country. Its high walls, interspersed by watchtowers topped with barbed wire, were patrolled by armed guards. The visitor’s room was a cold, dirty, rectangular cell, divided by a chest-high wall topped with a wire […]
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 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.
Continue ReadingFrom a punk rock collective in Borneo to European proto-colonies and ethnic minorities in India, rock stars and a circus from Cambodia, the scourge of development in Laos, female motorcycle taxi drivers in Thailand, Japanese entrepreneurs in France and my eye witness reports of the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the Asian Nikkei Review has published some […]
Continue ReadingA brand new and very kind review of my first novel, The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, at The Dorset Book Detective. Thanks! A snappy thriller with strong characterisation and witty dialogue, The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu is an entertaining read with as many plot twists as it has droll one liners. Tom Vater’s novel […]
Continue ReadingOne year ago today I got caught up in the Nepal Earthquake. I was covering with 5th international Nepal tattoo convention with Laure Siegel and Dom Pichard. The first big quake took place as we were interviewing tattooists in the ballroom of the Yak and Yeti Hotel. We spent the next four days wondering through […]
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