Customer Reviews

The Fourth Watcher: A Bangkok Thriller

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"The Fourth Watcher" written by Timothy Hallinan is my favorite book of the summer. It's riveting reading for people who like thrillers written with great wit, hair-raising twists, ever deepening layers of story, a likable hero, a vivid cast of characters so real you'll feel you know them, a story rooted in reality, edge-of-your-seat suspense, heart-pounding surprise, and an exotic foreign location. It's a sensational book. I couldn't put it down.

Hallinan takes you into underbelly of Southeast Asia and through the beauty of a culture rich with spiritual ideals and smiling faces. He paints pictures of glorious landscapes and urban madness, with characters that are alive and engaging. The villains and gangsters are terrifying, the suspense is unnerving, yet his writing style skillfully blends drama and excitement with incredible wit and a good deal of humor. This should be made into a movie. It's riveting.

A review by Dana King, New Mystery Reader said this: "The Fourth Watcher is true suspense in the Hitchcock mold. Just as one story line reaches a lull, the other picks up. The considerable machinery of The Fourth Watcher is held together by understated, yet virtuoso writing. A man recovering from serious injury has a "throat as loose and rippled as a theater curtain." A minor player caught in the act has, "Half a dozen emotions chase each other across [his] face, but the one that stakes it out and claims it is despair." While not a funny book, the humor works, and always grows from the situation."

[...]

All in all, I think Hallinan is an extraordinary writer. I've enjoyed all his books but "The Fourth Watcher" is the best yet. It gets my highest recommendation. Three exclamation points!!!

In the second book of Timothy Hallinan's beautifully written Bangkok series, we continue to follow Poke Rafferty, an American expatriate who is about to give up writing his "Looking for Trouble" travel series in order to settle down with his new family. In A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART we met Poke's girlfriend Rose, a former bar girl, Miaow, Poke's newly adopted daughter and Arthit, his police officer friend. Creating multi-faceted characters using deceptively simple prose is one of Hallinan's many gifts.

On Peachy, Rose's business partner: "The bank teller's eyes follow her all the way across the lobby: a woman in her late forties, wearing clothes that could provoke buyer's remorse in a seventeen-year-old."

Poke's observation about his father: "Except for a slight stoop, a lot of missing hair, and that shuffling walk, he looks surprisingly like the man Rafferty remembers from all those years ago. He has to be in his seventies, but time has barely laid a glove on him. It strikes Rafferty for the hundredth time that serenity and selfishness aren't that dissimilar. They both keep people young."

Hallinan gives us a view into the experience of being the westerner looking in from the outside, attempting to assimilate, but recognizing and accepting that he will never really "get it". One of the great benefits that come with reading these novels of Bangkok is a glimpse into eastern culture and philosophy and the often humorous view of westerners from an Asian perspective.

The city of Bangkok is a prominent character in THE FOURTH WATCHER and in A NAIL THROUGH THE HEART. Hallinan masterfully reveals a city made up of a unique blend of spirituality, carnality, ghosts, superstitions, the rich, the poor and unseen circles of power and influence.

In THE FOURTH WATCHER, the author deftly weaves together several subplots and skillfully brings them to a satisfying conclusion. One of the things I most admire about this writer is that when he explores dark and violent themes, the worst of both occurs "off screen" and within our own imaginations. Hallinan implies the worst, but does not hit his readers over the head with it.

A wonderful, fast paced read with deeply drawn characters I cared about, a richly textured setting and a gripping story.

Timothy Hallinan's "A Nail Through the Heart" (2007), introduced us to Poke Rafferty, the ex-pat travel writer living in Bangkok with his girl-friend Rose and the rescued street kid, Miaow (two of the toughest, smartest females south of the Gobi desert). In "The Fourth Watcher," Hallinan convincingly earns a place in the top tier of thriller authors--among the Parkers, the Cobens, the Pattersons, the Burkes, the Hillermans. As do all great novelists, Hallinan educates while he entertains us, and, I confess, left this hardened 78 year-old reader not only thrilled, but also a bit misty-eyed as well. Read the book--a guaranteed pleasure.

While Hallinan's first Bangkok thriller, "A Nail Through The Heart" I found to be quite enjoyable, moving at a quick pace, offering rich and nuanced offerings of Bangkok and Thai culture, I was rather disappointed by his second offering, "The Fourth Watcher." Before briefly detailing those aspects which I found to be "less than" I must point out some of Hallinan's good points. There are still vivid portraits of Bangkok life, still nuances of Thai culture, and there is clever use of language.

However, "The Fourth Watcher" is extremely byzantine, its scenes become preposterously unlikely as the novel moves on (forcing this reviewer to emerge
from the narrative flow to say "Come on!") and in other ways strains credulity. For example, the protagonist of the novel, Poke Rafferty, who is a journalist and a foreigner in Thailand, generally takes charge and instructs everyone else what to do. This includes the Thai police, U.S. Secret Service Agent, etc. Another criticism is this: Poke Rafferty is continuously being sarcastic with everyone (and sometimes his interlocutor returns the sarcasm). This, in and of itself, is not a problem. The problem is that the situations are often so extreme (and the use of this prop, is so frequent) that again, it strikes this reviewer as more like a TV Sitcom than the behavior of someone involved in a perilous situation.

In short, as the novel developed (or devolved, in my humble opinion) I grew more and more impatient, and wound up scanning the prose to get the point, rather than swimming in the prose and luxuriating in the development of the story.

I love Poke Rafferty and his beautiful wife and child. I was pulled into the first book which was haunting to me . . especially since it coincided with not only the trial starting of the Khmer Rouge camp monster BUT ALSO the capture of a child molester monster in Thailand. 2 very dark subjects that somehow were eventually eclipsed in the first book by the human perseverance and sensitivity of Poke.

That is why he and his "family" evoke for me The Thin Man series .... because he has such heart. And this is another great example of story telling involving this character. I keep on wanting to see it in film. He and his beautiful wife and his mischevious "daughter" and all of the other characters that come to life.

I doubt if I will ever make it to the far East but I won't have to with these books.

Poke Rafferty is a writer, who lives in Bangkok with his fiancée Rose and his daughter Miaow. He is looking to write more than just travel novels. Poke's novel titled "Living Wrong" is about living outside of the law. Poke wants some real life experience for his book so he has his friend Arnold Prettyman, a former CIA agent teach him how to follow people without getting caught. The only thing is Poke never realized that he would end up smack dab in the middle of a high stakes international thrill ride that would have him not only running for his life but would have him digging up some dirt and secrets that some very powerful people want left alone. Also, Poke is in for the surprise of his life when a long lost someone walks back into his life. Unfortunately there will be no happy reunion as this person has come calling on Poke for his help. Plus you won't believe how it all ends!


I enjoy reading international, suspense thrillers. From the summary I had read about The Fourth Watcher I knew this book was going to be right up my alley and would be good but I didn't realize it would be better than good it was great. The characters had some wonderful depth to them in addition to the fact that I thought they were all some in their own ways. I like when I read a book where the characters all have an equal part and can relate to each other in some way or other. From the first page to the last The Fourth Watcher picked up steam and keep on moving full-blast on a tank of high octane adrenaline rush that left you wanting more. I could tell Mr. Hallinan was passionate about his writing and his books as it showed. Mr. Hallinan could take you anywhere he wanted as well as make you feel like you were really there with Poke or anyone of the other characters in The Fourth Watcher. So if you are a must-read book than you have to check out The Fourth Watcher.

I guarantee you'll enjoy every twist and turn in this ride. This is my fist meeting with Poke Rafferty and I guess I'll have to look up his first adventure now. Well, I shouldn't say his. All the characters here are sharply drawn and I'm looking forward to the novel that brings Poke, Rose, and Miaow together. I'm glad I bumped into this one though and look forward to a future novel which will also continue the characters of Poke's father and his half sister who are introduced in this volume.What I like about Poke is the fact that he doesn't really know what he's doing but sort of bumbles his way through. He's not very great at making friends all the time, but you gotta like the guy.You'll find yourself caught short a few times....kinda laughing at what's going on and then suddenly feeling honest emotion and caring for the characters. I think that the less you know of the story, the more you'll enjoy it. The flaps on the cover and many of these reviews tell much of the story, but you might get more out of it by ignoring them and just finding out for yourself.

My goodness! N Korea is printing counterfeit Thailand bahts & also US dollars. Well, I do like an author that teaches me something along with a good story. The story does remind one that has been to the city of the streets, the restaurants, the people.

This is the first novel I've read by this author. Bangkok is a city that cannot be erased from one's memory once you've been there & experienced it. I would look forward to reading more books by this author.

Poke Rafferty is a writer living in Bangkok, Thailand, with his fiance, Rose, and his adopted daughter, Miaow. Poke writes travels books with a unique twist - travel books that focus on the criminal aspects of locations. But he's ready to give up the danger associated with these books to have a life with his two special women.

Enter trouble! And not just trouble, but trouble in spades. Chu, a Chinese gangster is after Poke's father, Frank. He figures to reach Frank through Poke, even though Poke hasn't seen his father since he was 16. At the same time, Rose and her business partner, Peachy, innocently wind up caught in a counterfeiting ring. Throw in some crooked cops and an American Secret Service Agent, and you may think you have the makings of chaos. But quite the contrary. You have the makings of an incredible, suspenseful crime fiction novel.

Hallinan's rain descriptions set the stage for the monsoon of trouble that is about to rain down on Poke and those around him. The foreshadowing is brilliant, and the rain continues to set the tone of the book throughout the course of events.The imagery in this book is absolutely mesmerizing.

Rafferty says that "'English is polyglot tongue...A linguistic hybrid enriched by grafts from many branches of the world's verbal tree.'" Hallinan was plucking from that tree constantly in this book.

Hallinan's talent for imagery swept this reader away to a foreign land, but his knack for character development held my hand and helped me walk right into the lives of these people.

When I taught high school English, I hammered home the multitude of ways an author could develop a character. One of the hardest elements for students to grasp was how a character was developed through his/her interactions with other characters. This book is a text on how to effectively achieve that development. Poke's interaction with Rose and Miaow obviously builds one layer of his character. His relationship with his friend Arthit adds another. But what makes Poke most interesting is his connection to characters like his half-sister, Ming Li.

All of the characters were extremely rich and added so much to the overall book.

The plot comes across at first as being all over the place. If you read the book jacket, you know that Poke is the main character. However, this main character walks himself right into the barrel of a gun and is shot in the face in the first chapter. So how in the world is he going to do anything for the rest of the book, right? Especially since the plot takes place over the course of three DAYS, and no, it isn't a flashback! Now THERE is a hook. And then you add in the counterfeiting ring, the American Secret Service Agent, Elson, the Chinese gangster and all his thugs, stolen rubies...just where is all this going? The way that Hallinan weaves all these independent elements together is phenomenally intriguing and it keeps the pace of the book quick.

The tone of the book could have gotten very dark and dreary, but Hallinan's wit lightens the heaviness.

I highly recommend this novel!

Timothy Hallinan has written a great follow up to A Nail Through the Heart. It's tense, it's nail-biting, it's unpredictable, but most importantly, it's heart-warming. Beneath all the crime and the violence and the unseen darkness of Bangkok lies the touching bond between a travel writer, an ex go-go dancer, and an adopted child. This is where the real story takes place, among these likable characters who seem to be tied together by fate. It's only two novels into this excellent series, and Mr. Hallinan has managed to make me really care about Poke, Rose and Miaow (especially Miaow, who picks out shirts for Poke, likes pink milkshakes and hates being kissed on the top of her head - perfectly appropriate for this little girl!) and I simply can't wait for the third Bangkok book.