The Fear Artist - Timothy Halliman

There is a series of books about this character, Poke Rafferty, who is nominally a travel writer living in Bangkok, but somehow keeps falling into trouble. In this case, a man crashes into Poke as he leaves the paint store and is then shot. Then man whispers a few words before dying, and suddenly the cops are hassling Poke about a killing that is being kept out of the news. So he has to figure out what's going on and try to deal with the guy behind it.

Frankly, it's a little hard to believe Poke pulls this off given the forces that are supposedly against him, but the main person he's up against has enough dirty laundry he can be hung out to dry if that laundry can be aired to the public. But the book jacket really plays that guy - the "fear artist" in question - as being a little more fearsome than he comes off in the story. The guy rarely has any clue where Poke is or what he's doing, and we see enough of his life to see that yes, he is a piece of crap, but he's also a past-his-prime schmuck who has gotten himself stuck in a life he doesn't really want, and can't figure out how to escape from.

Halliman adds in a whole theme about fathers and daughters, or maybe its dads and their kids in general. The dads not knowing what to do with their daughters, or worrying about maintaining a connection with them as they get older. That you can shape who they become in ways you don't recognize. It works to add some context to Poke's worries, his concerns about the distance between him and his adopted daughter feeding into his general worries he might never see her again if he doesn't get this handled.

Halliman keeps the action moving. There's always another development. Even when Poke is just living out of roving freelance ambulances for a few days, he's trying to figure out his next move, and there are other plot threads advancing at the same time. The old Russian spy Poke is able to buy the assistance of was a little too cliched, but he's entertaining, like most of the characters. There are a few other subplots that will probably play out in future books in the series, or were following up from developments in earlier ones. I didn't really care about whatever was going on between Poke and his dad. Didn't add much other than something for Poke to complain about. Seems like he had plenty of options there already.

'After a stop to put three stitches in a patient, they drop him two corners from Mrs. Shin's apartment and circle the block while he cuts across a couple of sois to get to the building, where he reaches into the bushes and comes out with a brown paper bag, Then they return him to the place where they picked him up. He hikes back to the hotel, calls Dr. Ratt, and arranges to be picked up by another team at 7:00 A.M.

The safest place to be, he figures, is nowhere, and what could be more nowhere than the backseat of a car rolling through Bangkok at random?

Just another dark-skinned guy idling along in the back of a car. While he figures out how to live through all this. Whatever this is.'