A Good Death

by Christopher R. Cox

A nail-biting debut mystery that plunges readers into the seamy side streets of Bangkok and across violent Lao mountains

This expertly crafted debut introduces Sebastian Damon, a sharp-witted and likeable though down-on-his-luck Boston PI who catches an intriguing case. Linda Watts is a beautiful, talented Lao immigrant with a promising career—or she was, until she turns up dead in a cheap Bangkok guest house. Her death seems like a straightforward overdose to the Thai authorities, but her insurance company isn’t buying it. They hire Sebastian to travel halfway around the world to investigate, and so he finds himself completely out of place chasing faint leads through the broken streets of Bangkok.

An award-winning journalist with decades of experience traveling in and reporting on Southeast Asia, Christopher Cox takes readers on a vibrant journey through a corrupt and labyrinthine police bureaucracy, a network of steamy Bangkok nightclubs, and grimy hostels to a place where you can you feel the humid air and smell the frying street food. Along the way, he sprinkles in elements of romance as Sebastian finds himself falling for the beautiful and captivatingly mysterious Linda, and camaraderie with his father’s wise-cracking old Army buddy, a source who proves invaluable in navigating the back streets. For Sebastian, it’s the assignment of a lifetime, a journey that will change him forever in this richly imagined, compelling debut perfect for fans of John Burdett and Colin Cotterill.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

292 pages, Hardcover

First published February 19, 2013

About the author

My name is Christopher R. Cox and I am a recovering journalist. After nearly 20 years as a staff feature reporter for daily newspapers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Lowell and Boston, Massachusetts, where I racked up numerous national and regional awards -- but little financial lucre -- I left the business in 2005 to embark on a full-time regimen of freelance writing, Larium, and Third World travel. Alas, the lucre still escapes me. In its stead I've been able to visit the back of beyond (East Timor, anyone?) for such glossies as Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Caribbean Travel & Life, Global Traveler, ESPN: The Magazine, DestinAsian and Reader's Digest.

My non-fiction efforts also include the critically acclaimed adventure-travel book, "Chasing the Dragon: Into the Heart of the Golden Triangle" (Henry Holt & Co., 1996; Owl Books, 1997), about Burma's narco-warlords, and travels-from-hell (Cambodia Section) dispatches to two Lonely Planet anthologies, "Tales from Nowhere" (2006) and "By the Seat of My Pants" (2005).

"A Good Death" (St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, 2013) is my first novel. One of the first rules of fiction is: Write about what you know. Having traveled to Southeast Asia nearly 40 times since 1991, I had a wealth of material to draw upon for the narrative, which begins in Bangkok, Thailand, skirts Kanchanaburi (site of the Bridge on the River Kwai)and runs through the kingdom's little-visited northeast Isan region before plunging into off-the-grid Laos. How undeveloped is the one-party Communist state wedged between Thailand and Vietnam? When I first visited in 1992, four digits were enough to handle the country's entire telephone system. Communications have since vastly improved, though Laos remains an enigma -- the perfect setting for the long-standing mystery at the heart of my story.

Happy trails!

Reviews

[Larry Piper]

My spouse handed this one to me. Another dead-tree book. It was fairly interesting, albeit a bit on the grisly side. So, we have a private detective, Sebastian Damon, who is hired by an insurance agency to investigate the seeming death of a young Thai woman, Linda Watts. Watts had been a banker in Boston. On a visit to Thailand, she suddenly appears to have been murdered. At least someone was murdered who fit Watts' description adequately, and who had Watts' passport in her possession. The insurance company was suspicious and sent Damon to Thailand to investigate.

For a while Damon runs into lots of dead ends. Then, one day, he actually spies Watts singing in one of Thailand's many (it seems) seamy watering holes. He tracks her down. She admits that her death was "faked" (i.e. not a "good death") so that she could get insurance money to aid her in finding her father. He is alleged to still be living in a mountain village in the remote areas where Thiland, Laos, and Cambodia meet. She had long believed her father to have died. He'd been one of the MIAs from the Viet Nam war and had made a life for himself with one of the hill tribes. Something like that.

So, with the help of Sam Honeyman, an old army buddy of Sebastian's father, who had stayed behind to help hunt for MIAs, and had never left South East Asia, Sebastian and Linda headed off to the village of her birth. Along the way, they have to evade police and ???

It's a pretty interesting book, in part because it describes a part of the world about which we know so little, but a part which had been, and still is, badly damaged by our necessary-only-to-the-war-contractors-and-the-Congress-critters-who-luxuriate-in-their-money military "adventures" in the area back in the 1960s and 1970s. In some ways, pretty grisly.

[Casey]

1.5 Stars

[Megan Robinson]

I enjoyed the start of this book much more then the finish. Experiencing Thailand with the main character while he unearthed the mystery was pretty interesting. The whole second half where they went to Laos not so much for me, as the details around the war, tribes, etc did not interest me at all, nor did the search for the father.

[Michael]

I actually really, really enjoyed this. A shame he doesn't have any other books out. If there's one thing I took from it, though, it's that I never, ever want to go to Thailand. Ever.

[Nicole C. (using StoryGraph more these days)]

Sebastian is a private eye who's mired in his routine, usually involving catching adulterous spouses in the act. When a hefty insurance fraud scheme lands in his lap, it's a race against time to try to prove it. In the tropical haze of Thailand, Sebastian has to determine whether Linda Watts, a successful young banker who abruptly ran away to Thailand several weeks before - abandoning her promising career and a fiancé - is actually dead of a heroin overdose in a tourist hostel. According to the Thai police, it's a fairly open-and-shut case, but something is definitely lurking beneath the surface.

In some ways, it's a hard-boiled detective story for the aughts, but I found it fairly entertaining. These is not usually my genre, but I found it hard to put down. Mr. Cox's descriptions of the frenetic nightlife of Thailand was very interesting and I felt like I was right in the heart of Bangkok.

The second half of the novel did lag a little bit, and I wasn't entirely convinced of the storyline, but it still kept my interest enough to finish.

[Dan Downing]

Another lesson in not trusting an author to have any idea of what a good writer is. Douglas Preston gives a blurb which calls this a 'first-rate mystery', which is bunkum since there is not a mystery in the sense of a mystery novel. For those readers who have already explored Bangkok with, say, John Burdett, not even the setting will entrance.
Altogether a plodding first effort barely worth reading.

[Pat]

Interesting and definitely worth a read. The strengths is the setting and the way Thailand and Laos are described. The first part if the novel is particularly well done and engaging. The second half was less so but mostly due to it moving locales and going more into an adventure story albeit a well done one. I will keep an eye out for any future works by this author.

[Mary Ahlgren]

Quite a lot of travelogue... and detailed description. Interesting story though....reminds me in some ways of the book about the Hmong people I read a long time ago, and loved (The Spirit Catches you and you Fall Down)as well as Tom Robbins' "Villa Incognito".

[Don]

Christopher R. Cox's years of writing and his journeys traveling off the paths usually trodden by tourist in SE Asia offers "A Good Death" as a special treat. The background information on Thai and Laotian culture alone makes this a worthy read. However, the author has also graced us with a stunningly intriguing and textured mystery written with the skill of a mature story teller.

I'm still trying to get my mind back into my real life after being lost in this book with the main character, Sebastian Damon, a somewhat cynical Boston P.I. who takes a job that moves him from Boston into the bowels of Bangkok as he chases the truth behind a death benefit claim for an insurance company. Action and connections move him further into the dark shadows of SE Asia as he finds layers of truth. The veneer of superficial first impressions is slowly stripped from the characters as one travels with them to places few have seen. This story unfolds in a way that makes sense, continues to pick up speed and invites the reader to ask all along the way, What really happened? What don't I know? How can this possibly be resolved? How far will they go to know?

[Bonnie]

This debut novel introduces Sebastian Damon, a Boston PI who catches an intriguing case of a woman who has possibly faked her death for the 250,000 life insurance. He is hired by the insurance company to fly to Bangkok to try and determine if she is indeed dead. A truly corrupt picture is presented of the Thai police and shocking squalor of the city. He manages to locate the room where she died from an heroin overdose, track down her death certificate, talk to police who worked the crime scene, but it's not until he finally sees her that the action really begins. She is trying to locate her father who is in the mountains of Vietnam and he, of course, falls for her and together with an ex soldier of Sebastian's father, they brave horrible conditions and a corrupt police officer to try and find her father. The author, Christoper Cox, is an award-winning journalist who travelled through Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. His knowledge gives readers the feel of reading actual history and geography of the setting.

[Lani]

Christopher Cox’s debut novel is a story that makes any reader love a good mystery. It is a glimpse into a world that is foreign to most us and at times seems make-believe or of myth, of a time long ago. It’s hard to imagine when you live in America a world that is unlike ours, a world where its citizens live outside civilization and their lives are based on traditions that grew from fears and superstitions. Follow Sebastian Damon, a Boston PI, as he enters two worlds very different from his own to solve a case of insurance fraud. First, he is in Thailand, dealing with corrupt police bureaucracy and wondering through steamy Bangkok nightclubs and grimy hostels. Then he finds romance that leads him into the wild mountains of Loas, to her home village, where they will be lucky to get out alive. What is a bad death? What is a good death? Is there such a thing as a good death?

[Maddy]

PROTAGONIST: Sebastian Damon, PI
SETTING: Thailand and Laos
RATING: 3.25
WHY: Sebastian Damon, PI from Boston, is sent to Thailand by an insurance company to try to find a woman who supposedly died but they believe is still alive. He's successful, but then he becomes involved in helping find her father, a former US pilot. She left Laos as a child with her uncle during a time of great turmoil and feels a need to return to her family tribe. Cox REALLY knows his setting, and he must have done an enormous amount of research to put this book together. Unfortunately, he has provided way too many details about the culture, history and the various Thai and Lao factions, which I found completely overwhelming. I admired the effort, though.

[Reading Fool]

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Sebastian Damon is a private investigator who has been hired by an insurance company to investigate a suspected fraudulent claim on a life insurance policy. The investigation takes him to Thailand and Laos, where he looks for Linda Watts, a Laotian refugee who immigrated to America. The story is so creative and different and a great opportunity for me to learn more about Southeast Asia and the plight of the Thai and Laotian people during the Vietnam War. Compelling and suspenseful. Congrats to Damon on this debut mystery!

[Mary]

It's hard to believe how long ago the Vietnam war took place. The sorrow, the suffering, the anguish continue. The refugee wrenched from his or her own country, forced to assimilate in a country that sees no value in him, can overlook her humanity. The eternal problems of people who can't speak or undertand the language, can't read or write, can't get a job. Maybe I've read too many of these sorrowful books in too short a period of time. How many years have we prayed for peace in the world? Guess we had better keep praying.

[Julie]

If you are interested in reading a different kind of mystery set in exotic places with a good plot, believable characters (for the most part), and some really weird stuff, this is the book for you! There are parts that are somewhat difficult to believe-would someone really go from being a banker to thinking she will move back to the jungle, which she left when she was young, and believe some of the very strange religious ceremony these people have? I don't think so. Having said that, the author spins a good story about a place I'm sure I'll never visit. Very compelling tale.

[Ann]

Sebastian Damon is a PI from Boston. He is sent to Bankok to find a woman who was supposedly killed in Bankok due to a drug overdose. The insurance company thinks it is a scam to get them to pay insurance benefits and that the woman is still alive. Sebastian begins a harrowing journey into the unknown and soon finds answers to more than a simple body switch case. This was a good read with plenty of suspense but there was a lot I didn't understand. I would recommend it if you want action and suspense.

[Catherine Woodman]

The book creates a thinly veiled reason for the protagonist to quickly leave the United States and embark on a missing person's case in Thailand. The person he seeks is a woman who is one of the SE Asian hill tribe people, so we are able to leave Bangkok quickly--the author knows his stuff, and the book is very good atmospherically. The plot is a little more convoluted than it needs to be and people's motivations are less clear than would be ideal, but for the genre it is good.

[Meredith]

I'm really sorry that I squandered time on this book...it reads like a not very good novelization of a not very good action movie. I stuck with it because I was interested in the back story - history and culture of Indochina - but the writing was not great, the plot was predictable, and the characters were cartoons.

[Razzed]

Excellent, authentic, travel mystery about a private investigator looking into insurance fraud in Thailand, which turns into a search in the jungles of Laos. The details and authenticity of the writing are excellent. The pace is steady and the plot grabs you early on and keeps you going until the last page. Recommended.

[Charlene]

I had trouble both rating and reading this book. It is well crafted and I think well researched. It is a reminder of the havoc left in Bangkok and the Laos-Vietnam border. It is one of those books that catches you but you know it isn't going to turn out well. Makes you think of what will the US impact on Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Jo]

Debut author sets a mystery in Thailand. Interesting plot and compelling characters. Sebastian is a Boston private detective who has been sent to Thailand by an insurance company to make sure a claim on a life insurance policy is valid, i.e, that the decedent is really dead. During his travels, Sebastian sees the seamier side of Thailand and encounters an array of interesting characters.

[Jayw]

Sebastian Cox has taken over his dad's PI business and is barely squeaking by. When a beautiful young banker comes up dead of a heroin overdose in a Thai flophouse, Sebastian lands the job to confirm the death for the skeptical insurance company.

[Nancy]

I found this on the "new release" shelf at my local library. At first the book seemed to be a kind of procedural in an exotic location (Bangkok) but about half way through it turned into a thriller about tribal war and religion which is not my cup of tea so I only skimmed the last half.

[Andy Plonka]

Although the mystery is pretty run of the mill, the descriptions of Southeast Asia, Thailand and Laos in particular are wonderful, and insight into the way the indigenous people view the world is educational.

[Carrie Drake]

Something completely different for me. A look into a world that frightens me more after reading this book than before. Well written, good characters, compelling story and a great sense of place.
I recommend this mystery if you are looking for something new in an exotic setting.

[Kristin (MyBookishWays Reviews)]

Reviewed at Crime Fiction Lover (www.crimefictionlover.com) Fresh Meat at Criminal Element

[David Marshall]

This has all the usual problems of a first novel with poor pacing and a less than credible plot.

http://opionator.wordpress.com/2013/0...

[Jerry Peace]

Fiercely spiritual.

[Elaine]

Gritty, atmospheric, exciting

[Linda]

A mystery that goes back to the good old private eye ones of the past. Beautiful descriptions, gripping tale, sad, sad ending