A multimillionaire jet-setting Thai monk has fled the country with millions of dollars, leaving the nation in Thailand in sock and awe. Shock, because holy people aren’t supposed to be building empires and impregnating 13 year old girls. Awe, because he’s been getting away with the shenanigans for so long, he seems to be the […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Crime Scams & Espionage' Category
WoWasis Book review: ‘Tears of Autumn’ Vietnam spy fiction by Charles McCarry
Here at WoWasis, we love reading old books that we missed the first time around, especially when we discover something that we really shouldn’t have missed. We’ll bet you missed Charles McCarry’s thriller The Tears of Autumn (1974, ISBN 13-978-1-58567-890-7), too. That’s right, it was written in 1974, at which point many of the readers […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears’ by Randall Peffer
From our catbird seat here at WoWasis, it’s pretty clear that novelist Randall Peffer, in his Bangkok Dragons, Cape Cod Tears (2009, ISBN 978-1-60648-038-0), knows a few disparate worlds. The transgender world features prominently here, both in Bangkok and Cape Cod, as does the Portuguese fishing community of the Cape. Melding these worlds with police […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis Vietnam book review: Nelson DeMille’s ‘Word of Honor’
If you’re a U.S. citizen, when you visit Vietnam, you may be pleasantly surprised at the lack of animosity. After all, the Yanks tore up the country and killed a lot of people. Just how badly things go haywire under combat conditions in Vietnam is a story that sets the table for Nelson DeMille’s epic […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis banned book review: ‘Thailand Unhinged: the Death of Thai-Style Democracy’ by Federico Ferrara
This book has been banned in Thailand, and it’s easy to see why. It takes on the ruling class, the monarchy, and to a certain extent, denigrates the Thai people as well. With his Thailand Unhinged: the Death of Thai-Style Democracy (2011, ISBN 978-979-3780-84-9), author Federico Ferrara notes in his foreword that he’d self-censored his […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis crime review: Airport Baggage Theft Scam, the Booster Bag
Here at WoWasis, we’re pretty careful about scams in general, and one of our favorites is the booster bag, which is a device that, when placed over your own bag sitting on the ground, allows the perpetrator to carry off your bag before you know it. The perp is usually well-dressed, the last person you’d […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Bangladesh: Six Decades (1947-2007)’
We here at WoWasis find the statistics to be chilling. In the Bangladesh Liberation War, an estimated 3 million people were killed, 200,000 women raped. Pakistani troops kept comfort women, many taken from universities. These women gave birth to an estimated 10,000 babies, and eventually Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman suggested that he be listed […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Vets’ … Hong Kong and Bangkok intrigue by Stephen Leather
British novelist Stephen Leather has written an amazing body of fiction books centering on Southeast Asia. In The Vets (1993, ISBN 978-0-340-59770-5), he includes Hong Kong in the mix, in a fast-paced thriller that displays his knowledge of HK prior to its takeover by the Chinese as well as his understanding of the powerful mainland […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Missing in Rangoon’ by Christopher G. Moore
Veteran Bangkok-based novelist Christopher G. Moore’s book, Missing in Rangoon (2013, ISBN 978-616-7503-17-2), is the latest in his detective Vincent Calvino series. We here at WoWasis loved the plot, and the book has passages with some of the best writing we’ve seen from this prolific novelist. The story is delicious. Calvino gets a missing person’s […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘The Solitary Man,’ Golden Triangle adventure by Stephen Leather
We’d imagine that comparatively few of our WoWasis readers have served time in their nation’s prisons. Fewer have served in overseas prisons. And fewer still in the legendarily filthy prisons of Thailand. And that’s why so many people just love to read about them. From shit-encrusted holes in the floor that serve as toilets to […]
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