|
Book Previews |
|
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk Preview
Below you will find the opening snippet of The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk, to get a full preview in a range of formats please visit my dedicated give away page here. Feel free to pass the link on to anyone you think may be interested!
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk
Bob sat in his office and looked out at the people rushing through the mall. It was 10:30am, rather late for people to be on their way to work, he mused to himself. He called it his ‘office’, but on this day he was perched in ‘Coffee Corner’, a mediocre café in the corner of the ground floor of a small mall, near to Asok Skytrain station and attached to an office block. He had skirted by Starbucks on the way in and chuckled to himself. There were people paying a hundred baht and upwards for a coffee, some of the frappé-whatsits were nearer to two hundred. At Coffee Corner it was thirty-five baht for a hot black coffee. It suited Bob Lowe perfectly. He didn’t always have an office base as such, but on this Monday morning he actually had some work to do, or potential work. Bob Lowe’s Private Investigation service with its tagline of ‘no job too small’, had been running for nearly six months and business was slow off the ground, to say the least. Bob’s low-cost, means-tested, limited advertising business model was not proving totally effective.
“Time, my dear Susie. We must give it time,” Bob had repeatedly said to his friend and supposed business partner, Susie Hoare. Her role as business partner was at present confined to listening to Lowe’s musings and rants and allowing him to sleep on her sofa. He had quickly realised that with no guaranteed salary and his backup funds running seriously low, that rent was a luxury he simply couldn’t afford.
Bob felt he had hit on a potential winning formula. He had heard in the past of farang (foreigners) in town who provided a service for overseas clients. They would check up on their girlfriends and confirm if they were still operating as ‘bar girls’, the term Bangkok gave to its bar-based prostitutes. This had proved quite profitable for some people. Who, Bob wondered, was providing the same such service to local women? Many an expat philanderer was to be found playing around, cheating on their girlfriends and Lowe felt he was just the man to assist.
He had explained this many times to Susie, trying hard not to reveal to her that he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the bar girl scene in Bangkok. That was all in his past, he told himself.
“But, Bob, what can you charge them? Surely most won’t be able to pay you enough for you to make a living.”
“Aha. Well ahead of you there, Suze. I already have a payment plan worked out for my less financially secure clients. On taking the job I will charge one beer. One more beer for each day I am working the case and two beers on successful completion.” Bob sat back, with a smug, satisfied grin on his face.
Susie was horrified. “Oh my God! You’re actually serious!” Her trademark big toothy grin spread across her face, revealing her wrinkles in a sort of rippling effect.
Bob was deadly serious. When it came to beer, Bob Lowe didn’t joke. He reckoned if he could get himself two or three of the low-income clients a week, and spend about a week on each case, then he could basically get free beer. This was of course supplementary to the paying clients he felt he would eventually be able to get.
Bob was already spreading the word in the bars he frequented, and with some of the girls he knew. What he really needed was for them to pass the word on to the ex-bar girls. He envisioned a sort of pyramid scheme where his potential client base would grow simply and exponentially. The ones who had settled with a boyfriend, these were the ones he needed to market his services to; this was where the money was at, in Bob’s opinion. He was confident that he knew how these men would operate. They would never drink in the same bar or areas where they had met their partners for example. That was basic, and Bob knew all the alternatives and options.
He continued to wait in Coffee Corner. The previous night he had received a call from just such an ex-bar girl, Pim. Bob remembered her well....
Bangkok Delusions Preview
The bright lights dazzled Scotty Marshall as he weaved his way through the throngs of street hawkers. Everything imaginable seemed to be for sale on the streets of Bangkok; deep fried insects, wild animals, noodles and all sorts of other paraphernalia. That’s what the guidebooks had informed him in advance, and while it was partially true, the reality was a little less exotic. Most of the people getting in the way of the hefty American seemed to be selling t-shirts, fake Viagra, and other assorted tat. Marshall had only been wandering for 20 minutes but it was already appearing slightly less quirky and fascinating. He wanted to settle down with a nice cool beer and think about his plans for 2 weeks of pure relaxation in Thailand.
He stumbled on the kerb as a noodle seller pushed his heavy cart home. He’d hit that time when the day-time stalls were packing up, but almost automatically night time food places where unloading their bits and pieces, in advance of a long night cooking food for the drunk and desperate who spend their baht in Nana’s bars.
An elderly local shouted something and gesticulated at Scotty, who looked back with a questioning tone before he realised the guy was trying to unload bags of uncooked noodles onto the stretch of road that was about to become a temporary restaurant. Scotty gave an apologetic smile, which came out as more of a grimace and headed down the road he had been recommended by a friend who had visited a couple of years earlier.
Nana was the most infamous area of Bangkok sleaze, scrap that, it was one of the most infamous areas of Bangkok sleaze. The road was lined with bars and gaudy bright neon lights, while girls perched on chairs outside trying to entice the punters in. There were specialist bars for every taste, although the real specialist places were only discovered after months or even years exploring. Marshall glanced at the flashing lights of ‘Princesses’ - a ladyboy bar where some of the most beautiful of Nana’s girls catered for those ‘straight’ guys who just liked their beautiful women to have, shall we say, a hint of masculinity. Although of course many of the girls here had got rid of the last memories of their male past many years ago. He had no idea the leggy hostesses were born male, but he didn’t like the look of the place anyway, a bit too dark and squalid inside, so he continued to stutter and dodge his way deeper into the Nana abyss.
For newcomers and old-Bangkok hands alike there is something extraordinary about Nana, there can be few places in the urban world that are more difficult to get your head around. It spins and buzzes, there’s humour, fun, escapism, and right next to it there is appalling sleaze and exploitation. You have vile sleaze ball scumbags drinking with ‘normal’ guys on a good night out. There are tourists there just to see what goes on, and there are many simply there for people watching, amateur anthropologists if you will, fascinated to see every facet of human life, here, on and around this one street.
For the people watcher, the side alleys are the crème de la crème. It is here where you can patiently see the heart of what makes Nana tick; sex. Perch against a quiet outdoor bar within eye shot of a couple of ‘short-time’ hotels, the sort that many customers don’t even need the full hour they pay for, and you can learn it all.
Scotty Marshall had only been in Bangkok a couple of days and he was still blissfully naïve about some of what was going on, he didn’t really observe the steady stream of couples who walked past him. On his previous night down this road he didn’t even notice the same ladyboy enter the ‘Nana House Hotel’ 3 times in the space of 90 minutes with different customers.........
For a preview of the first two chapters of Bangkok Delusions enter your email address below:
Below you will find the opening snippet of The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk, to get a full preview in a range of formats please visit my dedicated give away page here. Feel free to pass the link on to anyone you think may be interested!
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk
Bob sat in his office and looked out at the people rushing through the mall. It was 10:30am, rather late for people to be on their way to work, he mused to himself. He called it his ‘office’, but on this day he was perched in ‘Coffee Corner’, a mediocre café in the corner of the ground floor of a small mall, near to Asok Skytrain station and attached to an office block. He had skirted by Starbucks on the way in and chuckled to himself. There were people paying a hundred baht and upwards for a coffee, some of the frappé-whatsits were nearer to two hundred. At Coffee Corner it was thirty-five baht for a hot black coffee. It suited Bob Lowe perfectly. He didn’t always have an office base as such, but on this Monday morning he actually had some work to do, or potential work. Bob Lowe’s Private Investigation service with its tagline of ‘no job too small’, had been running for nearly six months and business was slow off the ground, to say the least. Bob’s low-cost, means-tested, limited advertising business model was not proving totally effective.
“Time, my dear Susie. We must give it time,” Bob had repeatedly said to his friend and supposed business partner, Susie Hoare. Her role as business partner was at present confined to listening to Lowe’s musings and rants and allowing him to sleep on her sofa. He had quickly realised that with no guaranteed salary and his backup funds running seriously low, that rent was a luxury he simply couldn’t afford.
Bob felt he had hit on a potential winning formula. He had heard in the past of farang (foreigners) in town who provided a service for overseas clients. They would check up on their girlfriends and confirm if they were still operating as ‘bar girls’, the term Bangkok gave to its bar-based prostitutes. This had proved quite profitable for some people. Who, Bob wondered, was providing the same such service to local women? Many an expat philanderer was to be found playing around, cheating on their girlfriends and Lowe felt he was just the man to assist.
He had explained this many times to Susie, trying hard not to reveal to her that he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the bar girl scene in Bangkok. That was all in his past, he told himself.
“But, Bob, what can you charge them? Surely most won’t be able to pay you enough for you to make a living.”
“Aha. Well ahead of you there, Suze. I already have a payment plan worked out for my less financially secure clients. On taking the job I will charge one beer. One more beer for each day I am working the case and two beers on successful completion.” Bob sat back, with a smug, satisfied grin on his face.
Susie was horrified. “Oh my God! You’re actually serious!” Her trademark big toothy grin spread across her face, revealing her wrinkles in a sort of rippling effect.
Bob was deadly serious. When it came to beer, Bob Lowe didn’t joke. He reckoned if he could get himself two or three of the low-income clients a week, and spend about a week on each case, then he could basically get free beer. This was of course supplementary to the paying clients he felt he would eventually be able to get.
Bob was already spreading the word in the bars he frequented, and with some of the girls he knew. What he really needed was for them to pass the word on to the ex-bar girls. He envisioned a sort of pyramid scheme where his potential client base would grow simply and exponentially. The ones who had settled with a boyfriend, these were the ones he needed to market his services to; this was where the money was at, in Bob’s opinion. He was confident that he knew how these men would operate. They would never drink in the same bar or areas where they had met their partners for example. That was basic, and Bob knew all the alternatives and options.
He continued to wait in Coffee Corner. The previous night he had received a call from just such an ex-bar girl, Pim. Bob remembered her well....
Bangkok Delusions Preview
The bright lights dazzled Scotty Marshall as he weaved his way through the throngs of street hawkers. Everything imaginable seemed to be for sale on the streets of Bangkok; deep fried insects, wild animals, noodles and all sorts of other paraphernalia. That’s what the guidebooks had informed him in advance, and while it was partially true, the reality was a little less exotic. Most of the people getting in the way of the hefty American seemed to be selling t-shirts, fake Viagra, and other assorted tat. Marshall had only been wandering for 20 minutes but it was already appearing slightly less quirky and fascinating. He wanted to settle down with a nice cool beer and think about his plans for 2 weeks of pure relaxation in Thailand.
He stumbled on the kerb as a noodle seller pushed his heavy cart home. He’d hit that time when the day-time stalls were packing up, but almost automatically night time food places where unloading their bits and pieces, in advance of a long night cooking food for the drunk and desperate who spend their baht in Nana’s bars.
An elderly local shouted something and gesticulated at Scotty, who looked back with a questioning tone before he realised the guy was trying to unload bags of uncooked noodles onto the stretch of road that was about to become a temporary restaurant. Scotty gave an apologetic smile, which came out as more of a grimace and headed down the road he had been recommended by a friend who had visited a couple of years earlier.
Nana was the most infamous area of Bangkok sleaze, scrap that, it was one of the most infamous areas of Bangkok sleaze. The road was lined with bars and gaudy bright neon lights, while girls perched on chairs outside trying to entice the punters in. There were specialist bars for every taste, although the real specialist places were only discovered after months or even years exploring. Marshall glanced at the flashing lights of ‘Princesses’ - a ladyboy bar where some of the most beautiful of Nana’s girls catered for those ‘straight’ guys who just liked their beautiful women to have, shall we say, a hint of masculinity. Although of course many of the girls here had got rid of the last memories of their male past many years ago. He had no idea the leggy hostesses were born male, but he didn’t like the look of the place anyway, a bit too dark and squalid inside, so he continued to stutter and dodge his way deeper into the Nana abyss.
For newcomers and old-Bangkok hands alike there is something extraordinary about Nana, there can be few places in the urban world that are more difficult to get your head around. It spins and buzzes, there’s humour, fun, escapism, and right next to it there is appalling sleaze and exploitation. You have vile sleaze ball scumbags drinking with ‘normal’ guys on a good night out. There are tourists there just to see what goes on, and there are many simply there for people watching, amateur anthropologists if you will, fascinated to see every facet of human life, here, on and around this one street.
For the people watcher, the side alleys are the crème de la crème. It is here where you can patiently see the heart of what makes Nana tick; sex. Perch against a quiet outdoor bar within eye shot of a couple of ‘short-time’ hotels, the sort that many customers don’t even need the full hour they pay for, and you can learn it all.
Scotty Marshall had only been in Bangkok a couple of days and he was still blissfully naïve about some of what was going on, he didn’t really observe the steady stream of couples who walked past him. On his previous night down this road he didn’t even notice the same ladyboy enter the ‘Nana House Hotel’ 3 times in the space of 90 minutes with different customers.........
For a preview of the first two chapters of Bangkok Delusions enter your email address below:
