"Nail Through the Heart"
(Reviewed by Amanda Richards OCT 15, 2007)
Reading this book brought back memories of some lyrics from the “Chess” soundtrack:
One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
A little flesh, a little history
I can feel an angel sliding up to me
One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me
These lyrics could have been written for this book, and if a movie deal is ever signed, I’m betting they include a version of the song.
Anyway, the story is about a travel writer named Poke Rafferty, who often moonlights as a detective. Poke has friends in both high and low places, and through his research he knows the city and its people only too well. To complete his dysfunctional life, Poke is trying to make himself a family unit out of an unrelated pair of females – Rose, a former exotic dancer from the wrong side of the bar, and Miaow, an eight year old orphan from the streets.
Things happen pretty quickly from here on in – Miaow finds and brings home a stray urchin with a bad attitude and worse history, then Poke takes on an assignment to locate a man who has gone missing, and next thing he knows, he’s getting paid big bucks to recover the property of a lady, who just happens to be an intimidating old broad with a sinister secret. At first these are separate cases, but the leads soon begin mixing and the evidence starts matching, and Poke learns that some things are better off buried.
Alternating between dark moods and lurid descriptions, this book dives down to the depths of depravity and man’s inhumanity to man, but the underlying story is that of a good man who falls in love with a scarred city, for better or worse.
- Amazon readers rating:
from 15 reviews
Read a chapter excerpt from A Nail Through the Heart at Written Voices
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Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)
Poke Rafferty, Bangkok series:
- Nail Through the Heart (June 2007)
- The Fourth Watcher (July 2008)
Simeon Grist, Los Angeles series:
- The Four Last Things (1989)
- Everything But the Squeal (1990)
- Skin Deep (1991)
- Incinerator (1992)
- The Bone Polisher (1993)
- The Man with No Time (1994)
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Book Marks:
- Official website for Timothy Hallinan
- PopMatters review of A Nail Through the Heart
- Brothers Judd review of A Nail Through the Heart
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About the Author:
Timothy Hallinan was born in 1942 in Los Angeles, California. Hallinan attended UCLA and the California State University system during the sixties. For awhile he lived in a shack with a woman in Echo Park while attending college. He became heavily involved with a class of poet-musicians in the all-night scene in places like the Troubadour. For a few months he even slept at the Troubadour, however, since it did not close until around three or four a.m., bedtime was around dawn. He graduated with degrees in English, including a master's degree from UCLA. Hallinan met his wife while attending UCLA. He was guest speaking in one of her classes. She too has a couple of master's degrees and currently does acupressure and Thai yoga massage.
As a principal in one of America's top television-based public-relations firms, he represented programs sponsored by many Fortune 500 companies and pioneered new methods of making television programming accessible to teachers. He also taught writing for many years. Now he writes full time.
Hallinan divides his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand, where he has lived off and on for more than twenty years.
