Trouble brewing | Bangkok Post: lifestyle

EXPATSCENE

If crime thrillers are not your typical read, you might not be familiar with Jake Needham. The crime novelist has already published four works of fiction. His first novel, The Big Mango, released more than a decade ago and subsequent books Killing Plato and Laundry Man were set in Thailand, while his last novel, The Ambassador's Wife, took place in Singapore.

As demonstrated by Needham's "Letters From Asia" blog, which the author began last November, the boundary between reality and his fiction is blurred. His weekly posts reveal some of the racier or unknown sides of the Asian cities that appear in his novels and the accompanying photos only go further to give his work a sense of realism. So what if you were to learn that his forthcoming novel, A World of Trouble, tells the story of how an exiled former prime minister of Thailand is seeking the possibility to overthrow the current Thai government by using his fame as an army hero? Exciting, isn't it?

For those who may wonder why he chooses to set his crime thrillers in Asia, there are two particular reasons. Firstly, Needham once practised international law and worked the borderlines of the Pacific Rim, a place, as he puts in his online autobiography, where cultures collide and governments just struggle to keep up. "Needham certainly knows where a few bodies are buried", is what Asia Inc once wrote about him.