Description: The body an American acquaintance of Calvino's is fished out of the lake in Lumpini Park. Around his neck is a string of wooden amulets, the kind upcountry Thais wear to protect themselves from evil spirits. Only, rather than saving the man, these have killed him.
Review Quotes: "Calvino is at once in the finest tradition of the lone private detective and a complete original." --Matt Benyon Rees, author of The Samaritan's Secret
"Calvino is a worthy successor to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer." --The Nation (Bangkok) "The top foreign author focusing on the Land of Smiles, Christopher G. Moore clearly has a firsthand understanding of the expat milieu. . . . Moore is perspicacious." --Bangkok Post "Vincent Calvino [is] Bangkok's most newsworthy private eye. ... [Asia Hand is] dankly atmospheric." --Kirkus Reviews "Underneath Bangkok society is a deeply encrusted demiworld of hope, despair, corruption, and courage that Moore, an American-born writer who has lived there for almost twenty years, paints with maestrolike Dickensian strokes." --Tom Plate, The Seattle Times "Moore's flashy style successfully captures the dizzying contradictions of this vertiginous landscape."--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review