Category Archives: Crime fiction and film from Thailand

Pulp Friday: Monkey on a Chain by Charity Blackstock

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

“Revenge or hate? She didn’t know which – but something irresistible was drawing her to Bangkok to confront her brother’s killer.”

Today’s Pulp Friday contribution, Monkey on a Chain, is going to be short and sweet because I’ve got a mountain of writing deadlines at the moment.

This edition of Monkey on a Chain was published by MacFadden Bartell Books, one of the large US pulp publishers in the fifties and sixties. It was written by Charity Blackstock, a pseudonym for Paula Alladyce, who wrote over 20 crime and historical romance pulp novels between 1950 and 1981. She also used the names Ursala Today and Charlotte Keppel.

By the sound of the back cover blurb, Monkey on a Chain might have been one of Alladyce’s racier offerings.

“A journey into hate. 

Sue Douglas left her husband and children to seek out the man who had killed her beloved twin brother twenty years before in a prison camp on the notorious River Kwai. All she knew was his name and that he lived in Bangkok.

Sue stalked her quarry everywhere in the steamy, exotic city – including its brothels – until the night she met him by chance and realised suddenly that her life would never be the same. 

A torturous love-hate relationship developed between them which reached a shattering climax at her brother’s grave on the River Kawi…”… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Pulp fiction set in Asia, Pulp Friday, Vintage pulp paperback covers

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Kill List and three other upcoming crime films I have to see

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

It was a long wait for Drive, the subject of my last post, but well worth it.

Drive is not the only crime film I’ve been waiting for with anticipation. There are several others, headed up by the 2011 British film, Kill List. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this film and am still kicking myself I didn’t realise it was included in the Melbourne International Film Festival earlier this year.

Ben Wheatley, who did Down Terrace in 2009, directs Kill List. Down Terrace is the story of a family of low level drug runners who, almost literally, devour each other in an orgy of paranoia and violence as they attempt to unmask what they believe is a informer in their ranks. It is genuinely disturbing viewing.

The main characters of Kill List, Jay and Gal, are a couple of Iraq war vets and semi-professional hit men who take a contract to eliminate a list of three people. The movie starts off as traditional hit man story and then gradually morphs into a tale of horror, with a distinct Wicker Man feel to it

I’ll say no more. Check out the trailer here:

Madman Films has picked up the film and there is word they intend to give it a mainstream release here in Australia some time in 2012.… Read more

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Posted in Ben Wheatley, Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Crime film

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Interview: Timothy Hallinan

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

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

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Posted in Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Interviews

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Bangkok Noir?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Having lived in Bangkok in the mid-nineties and visited the city many times, I can only concur with Christopher G Moore that the new anthology he has edited, Bangkok Noir, is overdue.

I’ve long lamented to anyone who’ll listen that writers do not make more of Asia as a setting for crime fiction. Thailand is no exception. Things happen there every day, fantastic and awful that you simply could not make up if you tried.

Of the many noir anthologies to hit the shelves in recent years, only one other is set in Asia, Dehli Noir. To add to the allure of Bangkok Noir, two of the 12 stories are by Thai authors, although women don’t figure at all which is a bizarre omission.

The major question I have in relation to the anthology is whether it’s actually noir.

There’s a time to get picky about the definition of ‘noir’. I reckon when someone includes the word in the title of their book and there’s every indication that book will be the first of a series, that time is now.

Moore deals with the question of what is noir in the preface to the anthology and in a post he wrote here in late March for the website International Crime Authors Reality Check.

… Read more

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Posted in Christopher G Moore, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Neo Noir

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Off Limits in Saigon

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 1 Comment

I’m very happy to welcome back to Pulp Curry my partner in crime, Angela Savage, reviewing the 1988 film, Off Limits (which also appeared under the title Saigon). I first saw Off Limits years ago and always liked the originality of the premise – two US military police on the beat in war-time Saigon. Watching it again recently, I’m curious to know, what if any unacknowledged debt the movie owes to the Martin Limon books featuring Sueno and Bascom, two US military police stationed in South Korea in the seventies. Oh yes, and I definitely agree with Angela that Fred Ward is an underrated actor.

Off Limits, set in Saigon in 1968, is a riveting crime thriller that conveys the madness of the US war in Vietnam while treating it as background to the main story.

The plot centres on Criminal Investigation Division (CID) cops Sergeant Buck McGriff (Willem Dafoe, all thin hips and big lips) and Sergeant Albaby Perkins (Gregory Hines, chewing gum like it’s the only way he can keep the bile down) and their investigation into what turns out to be the serial killings of Vietnamese prostitutes.

With a short-list of suspects made up of US military top brass, they have to navigate a case as off limits as the part of Saigon where the murders take place.… Read more

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Posted in 1980s American crime films, Angela Savage, Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Crime film, Martin Limon

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