Tag Archives: Ghost Money

Ghost Money now available in paperback & other book related news

GhostMoneyfinalcoverAs we move with terrifying speed towards the end of 2015, I want to hit you all with a few pieces of book related news.

First up, Ghost Money, my crime novel set in nineties Cambodia is now available in hardback from the publisher, Crime Wave Press. A brand spanking new hard copy of the my novel, which is still getting good reviews, will set you back around $14 plus postage, give or take the exchange rate. I mean, really, as the Yuletide season approaches what better present could you give someone?

For those of you who may be new to this, here’s the pitch:

Cambodia, 1996, the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency is fragmenting, competing factions of the coalition government scrambling to gain the upper hand. Missing in the chaos is businessman Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan. 

But Avery has made dangerous enemies and Quinlan is not the only one looking. Teaming up with Heng Sarin, a local journalist, Quinlan’s search takes him from the freewheeling capital Phnom Penh to the battle scarred western borderlands. As the political temperature soars, he is slowly drawn into a mystery that plunges him into the heart of Cambodia’s bloody past.

Ghost Money is a crime novel about Cambodia in the mid-nineties, a broken country, what happens to those trapped between two periods of history, the choices they make, what they do to survive.Read more

Ghost Money just 99 cents for 24 hours on June 30

GhostMoneyfinalcoverI am a little brain dead tonight as a result of having spent a wonderful weekend in Adelaide as a guest of the South Australian Writers Centre inaugural Crimefest. I’ll be writing about this event more a little later in the week, when I’ve had some sleep.

For now, I just wanted to give readers a heads up that Crime Wave Press, the publisher of my crime novel set in 1990s Cambodia, Ghost Money, will be discounting the Kindle version of the book to 99 cents for 24 hours on June 30.

So, if you have not picked up a copy of the book yet, here is a chance to do so at very little cost.

Australian readers will be able to get the book here.

Those in the US and elsewhere, can do so here.

Ghost Money was first published in the US in 2012 and has recently been republished by the Hong Kong based Crime Wave Press.

Second time around the book is continuing to get good feedback from those who read it. The respected site, My Bookish Ways recently said of the Ghost Money that it ‘is highly recommended for old school and new school noir fans alike, especially for anyone looking for a change of locale.… Read more

Ghost Money redux

GhostMoneyfinalcoverOkay, it’s official. Ghost Money, my crime novel set in 1990s Cambodia, now has a second life via the folks at Hong Kong based publisher, Crime Wave Press.

Ghost Money was originally published in the US in 2012, but, given the setting, I’m thrilled that it’s now in the hands of an Asian-based publisher. And feast your eyes on the wonderful cover the folks at Crime Wave Press have done.

You can pick up the Kindle version of Ghost Money here, with the dead tree book to follow in the near future.

Regular Pulp Curry readers may be familiar with Ghost Money. For those who have not heard of it or checked it out, the elevator pitch involves a missing Australian businessman, a Vietnamese Australian ex-cop with a history, a country still recovering from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge. As one of my favourite blurbs for the book goes: “Ghost Money could well be The Third Man of Asian Noir.”

The longer pitch is as follows:

Cambodia, 1996, the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency is fragmenting, competing factions of the coalition government scrambling to gain the upper hand. Missing in the chaos is businessman Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan.… Read more

My Summer appearances

SpaceAge big shopGreetings all, just wanted to drop by the site for a quick update.

One of the most popular articles on Pulp Curry so far has been ‘The death of a bookshop: a tribute to Melbourne’s Kill City Books’, which appeared here in July last year.

Given this, I thought readers might be interested in checking out a piece of mine that appeared in the Life and Style section of Melbourne’s The Age newspaper last weekend.

It’s an ode to three of Melbourne’s great bookshops, Kill City, Space Age Books and the wonderful Carlton Secondhand Books, all of which have closed. Space Age Books closed in the late eighties. Kill City shut its doors in 2005. Carlton Secondhand Books stopped operating at the end of last year.

You can find the piece on-line here.

While I’m pulling on your coat, I also have a piece in The King’s Tribune Summer Reading Special. It’s a look at one of the best local novels I read in 2013, Infamy by Lenny Bartulin, and the the status of the Western generally in Australian fiction and film. The issue is available to pre-order in hard copy from the the site.

If that’s not enough Summer reading, the Kindle edition of my crime novel set in nineties Cambodia, Ghost Money, is still available on the great Satan Amazon for just a dollar as part of Snubnose Press’s holiday sale.… Read more

Book review: The Cambodian Book of the Dead

TheCambodianBookOfTheDead-144dpiI’ve been meaning to read Tom Vator’s debut novel, The Cambodian Book of the Dead for a while now. I’m glad I finally got around to doing the task, because it’s one hell of a ride. Amusing, horrifying, at times frustrating, always perceptive.

The Cambodian Book of the Dead is not for everyone. I was probably predisposed to the book before I’d read the first page, because of my fondness for crime fiction set in Asia generally and Cambodia in particular, a country I’ve spent a lot of time in and the setting of my own debut crime novel, Ghost Money.

As far as I could tell, The Cambodian Book of the Dead takes place in the early part of last decade. The Khmer Rouge insurgency is over. Pol Pot is dead, murdered by his own lieutenants in one last bout of bloodletting. Cambodia hovers between the civil war wracked basket case it was in the nineties and the must-see tourist destination it is now. Investment is starting to flow in, but things are slow. The ruling elite is still in the early stages of organising the wholesale plunder of the country they are carrying out today.

Maier is the Asia specialist for a top flight German private investigations firm, before that an international correspondent.… Read more