Needham's Next

[Guest]

Does anyone know if Jake Needham is writing another book?

[Stickman]

I met up with Jake a couple of months back and yes, he is writing a new one. He didn't say too much about it, suffice to say that it is set in this prt of the world. He tiold me the working title, but I think it was under wraps so I'm afraid that I can't mention it. I like his writing style and I'm sure it'll be well worth piking up a copy.

Stick

[Old Hippie]

ah, yeah, I am sure he is, I mean that is what he does right? o.k. I don't know, who is he?

[Guest]

quote:

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I don't know, who is he?

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Jake Needham: The Big Mango, © 1999, Asia Books, 356 pp., 974-8237-36-2

Jake Needham: Tea Money, © 2000, Asia Books, 378 pp., 974-8237-46-2

For the past year or two I've seen these books prominently displayed at the Asia Book stores. Perhaps that is why I was never tempted to buy them. But sitting at Don Muang waiting for a flight to Phnom Penh I knew I needed some form of entertainment between the trips to K11, so I reluctantly bought "The Big Mango."

The story has many ingredients of what made Dean Barrett's Kindgom of Make Belief such a good book. Espionage, money laundering, drug lords, ex-CIA, Thai cops, killers, as well as a plot going all the way back to the Vietnam War. While the book does not really talk much about Bangkok nightlife, the action takes us to a few massage parlors and short time hotels, and the grand finale takes place at Soi Cowboy.

I loved "The Big Mango," so I bought "Tea Money" for the long flight back to the sanuk-free-zone--and I finished it long before we landed. In my opinion, the book's ever better the "The Big Mango." Although the author follows the same basic formula, the books are well written and you can read them back to back without feeling that your're reading the same book. Once again, the story takes us to a few familiar places such as Soi Sarisin and Lumpini Park. And, instead of Soi Cowboy, the closing chapters take us all the way to Phuket.

Both books are good thrillers on their own. But Jake Needham also managed to capture the beauty and rhythm of Thailand. "The day he stopped being awed by Thai women, he figured, was the day he'd be stone cold dead." Spoken like a true Sanuker.

A few more excerpts:

"Most of the year people avoid breating the city's air unless it's been dried, chilled, and decontaminated by a whole lot of air conditioning. Not only is the stuff hot and soggy, usually it smells spoiled and a little sour, like it's been inhaled, digested, and exhaled by way too many people already ...

"But in winter the air turns soft and sweet, thick with the syrupy fragrances of frangipani, jasmin, and orchids... The sky is clear; the temperature is mild; and even the humidity falls to a tolerable level.

"The Thais hate it, of course. The moment it gets below eightly, they haul out parkas fit for winter in Alaska and swap their flip-flops for fur-lined mukluks. The foreign residents of Bangkok react to the onset of winder in a somewhat more measured fashion. At most, they roll down their sleeves."

"For a foreigner, stepping off into Bangkok at night was like falling into a black hole. You made your way on faith and instinct, not judgement. You grabbed for the rhythm beaten out by the natural voodoo of the place, and then you just held on."

"I would always be a foreigner here, I knew, and was constantly reminded of it. Sometimes I felt like a man at a dinner party hosted by a secret lodge that didn't want him for a member. Every word included a nuance he couldn't decode; every look contained social commentary worthy of a Dickens novel; every silence concealed an entire conversation. Why, I questioned myself at such times, would any man voluntarily chose to live in a country that was not the one of his birth, one in which he would always be an outsider, a place where he would never even be able to read the signs."

[ December 29, 2001: Message edited by: Mad Max ]