Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller (2009, ISBN 978-0-06-167223-1) is Bangkok Fiction writer Timothy Hallinan’s current foray into the ongoing saga of travel writer Poke Rafferty and his family, ex- bar girl Rose, and adopted daughter Miaow.

The novel is rather timely, in terms of what’s been happening politically in Bangkok during the first half of 2010, prosaically describing some of the elements underlying the social push-pull between the very wealthy and very poor in Thailand:

Rafferty knows Thailand well enough to be aware that people above a certain social and political level are virtually unaccountable, shielded from the consequences of their actions by layers of subordinates and networks of reciprocal favors and graft that corrupt both the police and the courts. These are the people, the “big people,” whom Rose despises, the people who attend dress balls with blood on their hands. There are not many of them, relatively speaking, but they have immense mass and they exert a kind of gravity that bends tens of thousands of lives into the orbit of their will.

Most farang pass through the gravitational Gordian knot of Bangkok unscathed, like long-haul comets for whom our solar system is just something else to shoulder their way past. Farang have no formal status here. They come and go. They dimple the surface of the city’s space-time like water-striding insects, staying a few months at a stretch and then flitting elsewhere. They don’t have enough mass to draw the gaze of the individuals around whom the orbits wheel.

But Rafferty is being gazed at. And he knows all the way to the pit of his stomach that it’s the worst thing that can happen to him. If they decide it is in their best interest, they can blow through him and his cobbled-together family like a cannonball through a handkerchief.

The above passage sets the scene for the action in the book, and for us here at WoWasis, we found the homeless street children to be the most compelling protagonists in the story. The fact that homeless beggars are essentially owned by criminal groups has long been one of Bangkok’s most uncomfortable secrets, and the management and enforcement structure, as well as the distribution and payment systems are well-explained. So too, are the living conditions of these powerless children and adults.

But Breathing Water is decidedly not a bleeding heart novel. As in the other tales of the saga, there are criminals whose stories are complex and full of surprises as the story unfolds. Veteran Bangkok watchers will recognize references to events, although fictionalized, that really occurred. The lives of the bad guys, which may seem bizarre to western readers, are similar to those described in the pages of Thailand’s newspapers. Hallinan is able to weave these disparate elements into a driving story that makes this book a difficult one to put down.

For readers of Hallinan’s previous books, the urchin-hero Superman returns, a notable recurring character dies, and Rafferty’s family is again in peril against societal elements that are more powerful than themselves.

This book is a great introduction to Thai society and politics for readers unfamiliar with the Land of Smiles. And for those who are familiar with life in the kingdom, it’s a terrific romp through the secret world that is barely noticeable, but completely surrounds their environment. Buy it now at the WoWasis estore, powered by Amazon.