Where will you be this summer? On the beach in the Bahamas, snowboarding in the Gobi Desert or simply sitting at home with an ice tea and dreaming to get away from your TV?
Wherever you start your holidays,Crime Wave Press, Asia’s crime fiction publisher, is offering criminally good literary distractions this week to ease you into the summer vibe.
The CWP catalogue includes tales of Buddhist sleuthing in Thailand, a drug crazed road movie tale that stretches along the 1970s hippie trail from London to Kathmandu, an undersea adventure set in the Philippines and a treasure hunt that encompasses Japan, Burma and Thailand and illuminates forgotten secrets of World War II.
Our protagonists, a crime solving Buddhist monk, a band of brothers that puts the boys from The Hangover to shame, a dysfunctional couple on a tropical road to hell and a feisty and flaky all American girl on the loose amongst Asia’s criminal underworld invite you to live their stories, survive their challenges and explore the darkest corners of Asian Noir.
Check out our Father Ananda titles, Mindfulness and Murder and Sister Suicide by Nick Wilgus, in which the Buddhist answer to Hercule Poirot investigates murder and corruption in Thailand’s monasteries. Or hit The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu by Tom Vater for a retrofitted throw-back to the Himalayas.
Follow hi class Tara and down and out Luke diving World War II ship wrecks in Dead Sea by Sam Lopez or take a wild ride with Val Benson, an American hostess working Tokyo nightclubs as she stumbles across a treasure map that will lead her to the Thai-Burmese badlands and force her to face Japanese war criminals, rogue CIA, crooked cops, Thai boxers and her congress man father in Gaijin Cowgirl by Jame DiBiasio.
Crime Wave Press brings you the best literary mayhem from around Asia. CWP titles are available as ebooks and, for the most part, as paperbacks. And to ease you into the summer vacations we offer all our Kindle editions at the criminally cool summer price of $2.99. Don’t Miss These Deals:
When a homeless boy living at the youth shelter run by a Buddhist monastery turns up dead, the abbot recruits Father Ananda, a monk and former police officer, to find out why. He discovers that all is not well at this urban monastery in the heart of Bangkok. Together with his dogged assistant, an orphaned boy named Jak, Father Ananda uncovers a startling series of clues that eventually expose the motivation behind the crime and lead him to the murderers. “Mindfulness and Murder” is the first in the Father Ananda murder-mystery series.
An award-winning movie based on Mindfulness and Murder was released in 2011 by DeWarenne Pictures in Bangkok and nominated for Best Screenplay by the Thailand National Films Awards 2012.
5-Star Amazon Reviews
“Description of monastery life and how it fits into the life of the town makes this story vivid. The monk/detective is an engaging fellow; the story is gripping; the outcome satisfying. Will read more by this author.”
“I enjoyed this book a lot, and highly recommend it. Fast-paced, but thoughtful, it gave me a real feel for Thailand. I really liked the character of Father Ananda. Can’t wait to see the movie if and when it ever comes to Netflix. A great read. You won’t be disappointed.”
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Sister Suicide
by Nick Wilgus
5-Star Amazon Review
“Great detective, in the tradition of Agatha Christie’s, with a lot of twists, and an unexpected ending. The Thai setting, including observations on its criminal scene, life in Bangkok, and coupled with a bit of Buddhist teachings (the main character is a monk, after all) give this work an attractive exotic flavor. By the end, you’ll feel you know the main characters, as they are depicted in a believable and realistic way. Definitely recommended.”
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The Devil’s Road to Kathmandu
by Tom Vater
The Devil’s Road To Kathmandu’ by Tom Vater is a tense, fast paced and kaleidoscopic pulp thriller, following the lives of two generations of drifters who become embroiled in a saga of sex, drugs and murder on the road between London and the Indian subcontinent.
In 1976, four friends, Dan, Fred, Tim and Thierry, drive a bus along the hippie trail from London to Kathmandu. En Route in Pakistan, a drug deal goes badly wrong, yet the boys escape with their lives and the narcotics. Thousands of kilometers, numerous acid trips, accidents, nightclubs and a pair of beautiful Siamese twins later, as they finally reach the counter-culture capital of the world, Kathmandu, Fred disappears with the drug money.
A quarter century later, after receiving mysterious emails inviting them to pick up their share of the money, Dan, Tim and Thierry are back in Kathmandu. The Nepalese capital is not the blissful mountain backwater they remember. Soon a trail of kidnapping and murder leads across the Roof of the World. With the help of Dan’s backpacking son, a tattooed lady and a Buddhist angel, the ageing hippies try to solve a 25-year old mystery that leads them amongst Himalayan peaks for a dramatic showdown with their past.
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Dead Sea
by Sam Lopez
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Working Tokyo nightclubs is easy money for beautiful and troubled American Val Benson – until a wealthy client with a dark past – reluctantly gives up a map to a stash of Japanese war loot and tempts his favourite girl into a dangerous treasure hunt.
But the Congressman’s daughter is not the only one interested in the map: Yakuza, bent cops, human traffickers, rogue CIA agents and her father are hot on her trail, snapping at her high heels.
So begins the dark, epic journey of a new anti-hero of Asian Noir, a protagonist both ambiguous and courageous, and utterly unreliable. From comfort women and tomb-raiding in Japanese-occupied Burma to the murderous echoes of the Vietnam War, long forgotten crimes come roaring back to life, as Val leaves a trail of destruction and chaos in her wake.
Together with her best friend, the equally unreliable nightclub hostess Suki, a British kickboxer and a washed up Australian treasure hunter, Val travels through Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok to the Thai-Burmese borderlands for a dramatic showdown with her pursuers. Finding the treasure before someone less deserving does is her only hope for survival, and perhaps redemption.
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