For the Dead
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4.5 • 14 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In Bangkok, Thailand, an American travel journalist and his Thai family find themselves inadvertently entangled in a web of dirty cops and far-reaching corruption when their daughter’s ill-gotten cell phone displays photographs of some very crooked cops, all of them thoroughly dead.
Poke Rafferty is happier than he's ever been. He's financially solvent, his family is about to grow larger, and his adopted Thai daughter, Miaow, seems to have settled in at junior high school. All that is endangered when Miaow and her boyfriend, Andrew, buy a stolen iPhone from a shady vendor and discover photographs of two dead police officers on it—disgraced officers, violently murdered to avenge the long-dead. Surrounding the murder investigation is a conspiracy that reaches the highest reaches of Bangkok law enforcement, and perhaps beyond. It soon becomes apparent that Miaow's discovery threatens the entire family—and if that's not enough, in order to survive, they may ultimately have to depend on someone who, in the past, has already betrayed them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Hallinan's engaging sixth thriller set in Bangkok and featuring American journalist Poke Rafferty (after 2012's The Fear Artist), Rafferty's adopted 13-year-old daughter, Miaow, and her 13-year-old boyfriend, Andrew Nguyen, purchase a used iPhone on which they find photos of police officers recently killed in an execution-style slaying. An ex-cop who had previously been indicted in a police-run murder-for-hire ring also appears in the photos. When shadowy assailants threaten Miaow, Rafferty reconciles with an estranged friend, the Bangkok police detective Arthit, in an attempt to bring down those behind both the killings and the assassination ring. Hallinan's overly elaborate and indirect narrative style, along with his tendency to reveal information that his characters already possess only partially, slows the story to a glacial pace at times, but the author's sympathetic and compelling characterization of Miaow and Andrew, as well as several street kids, makes for a harrowing, satisfying conclusion.
