Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
My publisher Next Chapter has released yet another blockbuster anthology of three of my novels thrown together as The Edge of Darkness. This collection includes my first novel, The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu, my most recent novel, The Green Panthers and the first part of my acclaimed Detective Maier series, The Cambodian Book of the […]
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Between 2013 and 2018, I published three crime novels featuring Maier, a former conflict journalist turned detective.Based in Hamburg, Maier solves crimes involving Germans who have gotten in trouble in Asia.The first two books in the series, The Cambodian Book of the Dead and The Man with the Golden Mind were published to great critical […]
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My novella collection Kolkata Noir is finally out with Next Chapter. During the Raj, Calcutta was the world’s second most economically powerful metropolis. In 2019, Kolkata, eastern India’s largest city, stands at a crossroads. Unlike Delhi and Mumbai, the West Bengal Capital is anything but an economic powerhouse. Its remote eastern location and decades of […]
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Very happy to have one of my short stories – Bag Times at the Blue Parrot – published in Face Masks and Hand Gels, a Covid-inspired literary anthology published by the Howl Literary Cooperative in Cambodia. Read Bag Times at the Blue Parrot here.
Continue ReadingTroubled Waters, the first novella I wrote with Laure Siegel for Ecoute Magazine, the story of a surfer who dies under mysterious circumstances on La Reunion Island, is out now in Le Phare de L’Enfer (The Lighthouse from Hell), a new anthology of crime stories for French learners in Germany. Our fourth novella ‘I Want […]
Continue ReadingRituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex.: Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York Gripping, absurd, tragic and resplendent – a correspondent’s life on the margins of victory, tragedy, death and sex. I can’t recommend this book enough to anyone remotely interested in the seamier and bloodier side of recent Asian history and […]
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 ReadingMekong Shadows, the new anthology of fiction from and about Cambodia, published my Saraswati Publishing is not available in print from Monument Books in Cambodia. The story collection features and extract from The Cambodian Book of the Dead along with contributions from many local and ex-pat writers. Read a review in Thailand’s The Nation.
Continue ReadingGreat write-up by Paul Dorsey in today’s Nation newspaper for the Mekong Shadows anthology with praise for The Cambodian Book of the Dead. The anthology’s best episode, hands down, is actually a long excerpt from “The Cambodian Book of the Dead”, a taut and disturbing novel by Tom Vater (“Sacred Skin – Thailand’s Spirit Tattoos”). […]
Continue ReadingEarlier this week, Saraswati Publishing in Phnom Penh launched Mekong Shadows a new anthology of dark tales from Cambodia. Edited by British journalist Iain Donnelly, this collection includes both Cambodian and ex pat writers, both complete unknowns and widely published authors, including Kosal Khiev, John Burdett and James Newman. Feedback has been positive with coverage […]
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