Bangkok-based detective-for-hire Vincent Calvino has found himself in a classic predicament: After coming through with a mountain of solid evidence for his American lawyer client, the lawyer dies under highly suspicious circumstances. Calvino wants his money; the dead attorney's company won't pay and, of course, won't reveal to Calvino who its client was.
Before long, the hard-drinking, rough-and-tumble Yank private eye finds himself in one jam after another just to get paid for the initial job.
This work, the ninth in Canadian author Christopher G. Moore's Calvino series, is, like its predecessors, festooned with memorable characters and a solid plot. Up to now, Moore has typically portrayed Thailand as a laid-back land where corruption is the natural order of things, to be tolerated in a laissez-faire manner, but this time he probes the country's dark side to new depths.