Customer Reviews

The Risk of Infidelity Index: A Vincent Calvino Crime Novel (Vincent Calvino Novels)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A riveting story! Detective Vinnie Calvino is wise to the intrigues of the motley citizens of Bangkok. He's a great character, a man trying to hold on to a battered integrity despite a clear-eyed view of the many lowlifes, high rollers, beautiful girls, and ugly deals in the so-called Land of Smiles. His asides on relationships, love, Buddhism, Thais, and expats are always spot-on. This isn't especially suprising since the author, Christopher G Moore, is according to the book flap, a longtime Bangkok resident. Having been to Thailand a number of times, I can testify that the tiniest details are wholly accurate and the settings are the real deal. No phony surreal stuff. Moore seems to know the secret ins, outs, and byways of the city and beautifully captures its raw and often painfully poignant vibrancy. He made me wonder why a place so ostensibly foreign is nevertheless so intensely familiar. Maybe it's the straying farang husbands, the corrupt careerist lawyers, and the ruthless Thai bigwigs all trying, like Calvino himself, to make it in the most exciting city in Asia.

I have given up on PW with this review. I could smell taste and touch Calvino when I read this. I went immediately on a hunt for more Calvino books and can't wait for Grove to publish more. There is something very subtle in the way that Moore uses non-flowery language to create a scene so strong that I could smell what Bangkok must be like and see the characters in motion. I am glad I found this author as there is much exciting reading ahead. Publishers Weekly go home.

In Bangkok, attorney Andrew Danielson hires American expatriate private investigator Vincent Calvino to look into an illegal drug operation. With the $10,000 fee and an expected success, Vincent believes he will obtain an investigative position with the World health organization New York as he has the proof.

Two floors below his office is the One Hand Clapping massage parlor Vincent breaks down the door as he expects trouble inside. He is right because he find a dead nineteen years old young "working" girl lying in her bed. The same day Andrew dies from an alleged heart attack; his law firm refuses to pay Vincent his expenses let alone his fee. As demonstrations rock the city, Vincent finds himself unpaid and short cash. Three of the Fab Four expatriate female friends hire him to conduct surveillance of their spouses. Debra, Janet and Ruth have just read The Risk of Infidelity Index, which names Bangkok as the number one city for spousal infidelity. The fourth member Ruth is a recent widow; her spouse Andrew having just died from cardiac arrest. All three of his recent activities soon tie together in a major complex fiasco in which he may return to New York for his funeral instead of for a job.

THE RISK OF INFIDELITY INDEX is a terrific Bangkok investigative tale starring an American expatriate who finds he is getting deeper into trouble when he just wants to collect his fee. The story line is at its best when Vincent causes havoc or explains life in Thailand wit its' spiders, frogs and shells. When the Fab Four appear, the plot turns humorous but loses a bit of its Asian Urban Noir feel. Still this American Farang's misadventures are fun to follow (see MINOR WIFE and SPIRIT HOUSE) as they rival the BANGKOK HAUNTS of John Burdett.

Harriet Klausner

This book's title refers to the English wives of husbands working in Thailand who measure the numeral incidence of the infidelity of their husbands in various countries, Thailand being at the pinnacle of their list.
The women of Thailand that these Anglo husbands lust for are really just girls drawn by pimps from the countryside, easily replaceable, who are really sex slaves whose lives have no value whatsoever to their pimps other than the money the girls produce for them and the degree of absolute loyalty they show their masters in doing and saying exactly what they are told. In this excellent thriller this is shown in how these girls are brutally murdered based on the slightest whiff of disloyalty or desire to do something for themselves that is perceived. The police of Thailand are shown as totally corrupt, protecting the mobsters who run the city based on their bribes and on fear of them. One joy I found in reading about Detective Calvino's valiant struggle against these forces of evil, was getting a view of what Thailand is really about, especially in dealing with Americans, especially those who question the system. It is indeed better even than visiting Thailand myself, which I will now cross off my Bucket List. Christopher Moore has done an excellent job here and well deserves his 5 stars.

Great read start to finish. I love the combination of adventure, thai culture, and crime/drama. Now the challenge is getting the remaining books in the series via amazon/kindle(harder than I imagined).

C Moore writes a very good mystery novel, and of course, it is part of the Vincent Calvino series. Many of the places he describes in the book are places that I have been when visiting Bangkok (I have traveled to Bangkok about 25 times.)

The books keeps you fully engrossed in the story and when you finish you want to read more!

The story, set in Bangkok, starts well. The author weaves local customs into his yarn about a private detective, Vincent Calvino, whose office sits above a failing massage parlor. Calvino is also failing, and he really needs the fee he should get for investigating a smuggling operation involving phony pharmaceuticals. So far so good. But I soon found myself not caring whether his client really died from a heart attack while sitting on the toilet or did it have something to do with the AIDS drugs in his bloodstream; what really happened to the "ying" who died in the massage parlor; how did Calvino manage to stroll away after he broke the slanderous drunk's nose (said drunk being comforted by ice soaked in urine); how do things work out with the "Fab Four," expatriate wives of wealthy expatriates who want to find out if their hubbies are cheating on them; why are the "Fab Four" crying when they chop up onions during a weird cooking class.

I gave up after seventy pages. The writing, after the first several pages, becomes awkward. There are typos. It occurs to me that an excellent editor could have come to the rescue here.