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Timothy Hallinan

“Hallinan is a wordsmith of the first order, and he puts his great narrative skills into overdrive on this one….You won’t read a better thriller this year!”
—John Lescroart, New York Times bestselling author of Treasure Hunt

Author Timothy Hallinan returns to Bangkok, Thailand—and plunges his protagonist, travel writer Poke Rafferty, into graver peril than ever before—in The Queen of Patpong, Hallinan’s fourth Rafferty thriller following A Nail Through the Heart, The Fourth Watcher, and Breathing Water. Fans of John Burdett, Alexander McCall Smith, Daniel Silva, and Alan Furst who love being transported to exotic locales will be riveted when a nightmare figure from the past arrives at Poke Rafferty’s door to bring chaos and danger to the lives of the people he loves.

HarperCollins e-books

The Poke Rafferty Thrillers

The Queen of Patpong

An expat detective in Bangkok discovers the dark truths beneath the surface of his chosen home in this “fast, bold, and beautifully written” thriller (T. Jefferson Parker).

Travel writer Poke Rafferty was good at looking for trouble—so good that he made a little money writing a few offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored. But that was before Bangkok stole his heart. Now the expat American is happily playing family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and with Miaow, the wary street child he wants to adopt. But settling down won’t be as easy as it seems . . .

First, Poke takes in Miaow’s friend, a troubled and terrifying street urchin named Superman. Then he agrees to help an Aussie woman find her missing uncle—and accepts an old woman’s generous payment to find a blackmailing thief. Soon, these three seemingly disparate events begin to overlap, pulling Poke into dark, unfamiliar terrain. 

Poke soon comes to realize that he’s been gliding across the surface of a culture he really doesn’t understand—and that what he doesn’t know is about to hurt him and everyone he loves.

A Nail Through the Heart: A Novel of Bangkok