Tag Archives: The Queen of Patpong

Interview: Timothy Hallinan

The Queen of Patpong is the the fourth book by Timothy Hallinan set in Thailand featuring the character of Poke Rafferty, a Filipino Irish PI, but the first one I’ve read. As the book opens, Rafferty is living peacefully enough in Bangkok with his ex-bar girl wife Rose and Miaow, a young street kid they have more or less adopted. Until a very bad man called Howard Horner enters the story. He’s a security contractor in Afghanistan with a link to Rose’s past as a prostitute. Most of the book is an extended journey through Rose’s past, starting when she was a young girl called Kwan living in a poor village in the Thai countryside, through to her journey into the sex trade in Bangkok.

It’s one of the most interesting and unusual crime novels I’ve read recently. Tim was kind enough to answer some questions about his work for Pulp Curry.

I’ve just finished reading The Queen of Patpong. It’s your fourth Poke Rafferty book, but the first I’ve read. What made you want to set a crime novel in Thailand?

I’ve lived there off and on for 30 years, and it’s the most interesting city I know – just a total collision between sleaze and spirit, luxury and poverty, sprawl (it’s the third-biggest city in the world in terms of area) and small towns, because a lot of the little neighborhoods that make it up were once towns that the city ate, and they remain very insular. Read more