Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
My close friend, my favorite American, sometime photographer and fellow traveler, Scott Nicholson died a little over a year ago. About a decade ago, Scott and I and my then wife Aroon traveled through Laos together. One of the locations we visited was the Buddha Park near Vientiane, a neglected unruly collection of concrete sculptures […]
Continue ReadingFantastic and exhaustive review of the third Detective Maier novel, The Monsoon Ghost Image at Categorically Well Read, published by Crime Wave Press: I was curious as I read my way through this trilogy of thrillers why Vater decided to set them in 2001-2, the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With TMGI his […]
Continue ReadingSpotted a couple of books of mine in a second hand shop in Banglamphu, Bangkok, the other day. My first nonfiction Beyond the Pancake Trench (2004) and my second novel The Cambodian Book of the Dead (2013).
Continue ReadingThe Monsoon Ghost Image, the third installment of the Detective Maier series, published by Crime Wave Press, is on a virtual book tour this week. And an ebook copy is yours for just 99cents. The third Detective Maier mystery is a taut and crazy spy thriller for our disturbing times. When award-winning German conflict photographer […]
Continue ReadingI am interviewed at Rainne’s Ramblings this week about my brand new novel The Monsoon Ghost Image, the Detective Maier Mystery series and about how I became a writer. Here’s a taster: How did your journey as a writer begin? I was living in a cheap room in a cheap guest house on Freak Street […]
Continue ReadingFellow author Janet Brown has posted a fantastic and very thorough review of The Monsoon Ghost Image on Amazon. E book copies are US$3.99 at the moment. It’s not easy to find a true noir detective in fiction these days, probably because as the German gumshoe Maier decides in The Monsoon Ghost Image, “Why solve […]
Continue ReadingPatrick French reports on Drifters, Conspirators, and Noir in Cambodia’s Capital City for Crime Reads and writes… “Hard-boiled and noir is pretty much the only option on the menu when it comes to Phnom Penh crime writing. Tom Vater, a Bangkok-based writer and publisher, wrote The Cambodian Book of the Dead (2013) which sees German […]
Continue ReadingToday’s interview is with a very special friend of the Where Sidewalks End community. It is my honour to introduce to you Mr Tom Vater. Tom is a published author, a long time journalist in the field, co-owner of a publishing house “Crime Wave Press”, and a long time explorer of the world, with a […]
Continue ReadingSitting on the banks of the Song River, the rural town might seem serene now. But Vang Vieng has seen a tumultuous 15 years, evolving from an agricultural community to a hedonistic party capital when it was “discovered” by Western shoestring travelers in the late 1990s. Excessive drinking, drugs, trash, concrete construction and fatal accidents […]
Continue ReadingSet on the banks of the Song River and facing spectacular limestone mountain ridges, Vang Vieng’s swankiest hotel resort offers a winning combination of Laotian culture and French colonial era ambience, with fantastic service, excellent facilities, great tours and a good restaurant… I am just back from Laos, where I was researching articles for the […]
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