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Jenna Murphy #1
A Head in Cambodia
“Nancy Tingley's spellbinding mystery beautifully weaves together lush language, the intricacies of the Asian art world and page-turning tension. Richly rendered scenes follow one upon the other, making the reader wish the book would never end.” —Nina Schuyler, author of The TranslatorWhen the alluring, eleventh-century Cambodian stone head of Radha, consort to Krishna, shows up at the Searles Museum, young curator Jenna Murphy doesn’t suspect that it will lead her to a murder. Asian art is her bailiwick, not criminal investigation, and her immediate concern is simply figuring out whether the head is one famously stolen from its body, or a fake.
When a second decapitation happens — this time of an art collector, not a statue — Jenna finds herself drawn into a different kind of mystery, and the stakes are life or death. It turns out that the same talents for research and for unraveling puzzles — the bread and butter of an art historian — have perfectly equipped her to solve crimes. She’s certain the sculpture provides clues to help her solve the case, which takes her to Thailand and Cambodia. But the collectors, dealers, and con artists of the Bangkok art world only compound her questions.
A Head in Cambodia is the fiction debut of noted Asian art expert Nancy Tingley. Readers will delight in the rarified world of collecting, as well as getting to know Jenna, an intrepid and shrewd observer who will easily find her place among V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Milhone, and other great female sleuths.
When a second decapitation happens — this time of an art collector, not a statue — Jenna finds herself drawn into a different kind of mystery, and the stakes are life or death. It turns out that the same talents for research and for unraveling puzzles — the bread and butter of an art historian — have perfectly equipped her to solve crimes. She’s certain the sculpture provides clues to help her solve the case, which takes her to Thailand and Cambodia. But the collectors, dealers, and con artists of the Bangkok art world only compound her questions.
A Head in Cambodia is the fiction debut of noted Asian art expert Nancy Tingley. Readers will delight in the rarified world of collecting, as well as getting to know Jenna, an intrepid and shrewd observer who will easily find her place among V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Milhone, and other great female sleuths.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 15, 2018
One of the charms of art-related crime -- that it rarely leads to murder or mayhem -- is also one of the things that makes it hard to dramatize, especially if you're writing from the viewpoint of the detectives. An author has to work pretty hard to inject urgency into the hunt for a stolen painting or a smuggled antiquity. How exactly does it matter if Our Hero finds the dingus tomorrow or next year? As Dennis Leary's character says in 1999's The Thomas Crown Affair, "If some Houdini wants to snatch a couple swirls of paint that are really only important to some very silly rich people, I don't really give a damn." The author has really only two options: write the action from the criminal's viewpoint (like I do), or figure out a plausible way to force the perp to jump from burglary to Murder One.
Debut author Nancy Tingley opts for Door #2 in A Head in Cambodia.
Jenna Murphy, a curator at a privately-owned museum in California's Marin County, has a full plate: she's orchestrating the imminent opening of a new exhibit, trying to deal with a manager who's as incompetent as he is petty and scheming, and juggling an ever-expanding workload with some fragment of a life. Then a major patron brings in the granite head of Radha, Krishna's beautiful main squeeze, and wants to know if the sculpture is authentically old. Needless to say, answering this seemingly straightforward question leads from California to Cambodia, and to murder.
Jenna's reasonably good company, a good thing since she's also the narrator and is on every page. In her mid-thirties and ambivalent about the dating game, she works too much, has too little fun, and retreats into videos and comfort food more than is strictly good for her. As a curator and art historian, though, she's confident, perceptive, and knowledgeable without coming off as a pedant. Her spoken and narrative voices match, a trick that often eludes less-experienced authors. She describes both people and settings well enough to help us picture them without going overboard.
The plot moves along at a comfortable pace. The conceit that moves us from the U.S. to a tour of Angkorian Cambodia seems organic enough to buy (not always the case in stories like this). A common problem with amateur-detective stories is that there's no good reason for the protagonist to be nosing around whatever crime is on the table; Jenna occasionally scrapes the edge of this issue, but recovers. The story moves in a fairly straight line with few major diversions, more like real life than book life. Don't expect breathtaking reversals or stunning reveals.
Above all, don't expect action. This is, at bottom, a cozy. Not the modern kind that relies on hobbies, recipes, and crimebusting cats, but the old-school kind that the likes of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout wrote. There's only one onstage murder, seen from a distance; extremely veiled references to sex; and no language rougher than what you're likely to hear on the Big 5 broadcast TV networks. It's all about people talking to other people and winkling out clues from what's said.
The author, like her heroine, is a freelance museum curator and a scholar of classical Southeast Asian art, and has traveled extensively in the area. It shows; Jenna's observations on the temple complexes, the artifacts, and the details of getting around in Cambodia and Thailand are both precise and filled with the kind of detail you don't get from Google Earth. If you don't know anything about Hindu deities or Southeast Asian art or architecture, you may want to keep a web browser handy so you can get pictures to go along with the references.
This is the author's first go with writing fiction, and so, like Jenna's lightning tour of Cambodia, not everything goes smoothly. With the exception of the museum director and the aforementioned wet rag of a manager, Jenna's workmates don't get enough stage time to be much more than types. Likewise, only a handful of the dozen or so people accompanying Jenna on her tour are anything more than names. That museum patron, P.P., is vividly sketched, but was so constantly onstage that I had to wonder when he ever had time to work to amass the fortune he lavishes on the museum. And while it's normal for a cozy to push the crimes offstage, it's not usual to push the resolution to the wings; we hear about the denouement in an exchange of dialog rather than getting to experience the bad guy's takedown.
This is the first in a series. The second book, A Death in Bali: A Jenna Murphy Mystery , has already hit the market. There's more if you like this one.
If you like your murder mysteries genteel, spiced with exotic locales and fine art, and led by a personable young lady who knows her slice of the world and doesn't take "no" for a answer, you should give A Head in Cambodia a try. You'll learn a little, see some sights, and have a good time without the hangovers or jet lag Our Heroine suffers on our behalf.
Debut author Nancy Tingley opts for Door #2 in A Head in Cambodia.
Jenna Murphy, a curator at a privately-owned museum in California's Marin County, has a full plate: she's orchestrating the imminent opening of a new exhibit, trying to deal with a manager who's as incompetent as he is petty and scheming, and juggling an ever-expanding workload with some fragment of a life. Then a major patron brings in the granite head of Radha, Krishna's beautiful main squeeze, and wants to know if the sculpture is authentically old. Needless to say, answering this seemingly straightforward question leads from California to Cambodia, and to murder.
Jenna's reasonably good company, a good thing since she's also the narrator and is on every page. In her mid-thirties and ambivalent about the dating game, she works too much, has too little fun, and retreats into videos and comfort food more than is strictly good for her. As a curator and art historian, though, she's confident, perceptive, and knowledgeable without coming off as a pedant. Her spoken and narrative voices match, a trick that often eludes less-experienced authors. She describes both people and settings well enough to help us picture them without going overboard.
The plot moves along at a comfortable pace. The conceit that moves us from the U.S. to a tour of Angkorian Cambodia seems organic enough to buy (not always the case in stories like this). A common problem with amateur-detective stories is that there's no good reason for the protagonist to be nosing around whatever crime is on the table; Jenna occasionally scrapes the edge of this issue, but recovers. The story moves in a fairly straight line with few major diversions, more like real life than book life. Don't expect breathtaking reversals or stunning reveals.
Above all, don't expect action. This is, at bottom, a cozy. Not the modern kind that relies on hobbies, recipes, and crimebusting cats, but the old-school kind that the likes of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout wrote. There's only one onstage murder, seen from a distance; extremely veiled references to sex; and no language rougher than what you're likely to hear on the Big 5 broadcast TV networks. It's all about people talking to other people and winkling out clues from what's said.
The author, like her heroine, is a freelance museum curator and a scholar of classical Southeast Asian art, and has traveled extensively in the area. It shows; Jenna's observations on the temple complexes, the artifacts, and the details of getting around in Cambodia and Thailand are both precise and filled with the kind of detail you don't get from Google Earth. If you don't know anything about Hindu deities or Southeast Asian art or architecture, you may want to keep a web browser handy so you can get pictures to go along with the references.
This is the author's first go with writing fiction, and so, like Jenna's lightning tour of Cambodia, not everything goes smoothly. With the exception of the museum director and the aforementioned wet rag of a manager, Jenna's workmates don't get enough stage time to be much more than types. Likewise, only a handful of the dozen or so people accompanying Jenna on her tour are anything more than names. That museum patron, P.P., is vividly sketched, but was so constantly onstage that I had to wonder when he ever had time to work to amass the fortune he lavishes on the museum. And while it's normal for a cozy to push the crimes offstage, it's not usual to push the resolution to the wings; we hear about the denouement in an exchange of dialog rather than getting to experience the bad guy's takedown.
This is the first in a series. The second book, A Death in Bali: A Jenna Murphy Mystery , has already hit the market. There's more if you like this one.
If you like your murder mysteries genteel, spiced with exotic locales and fine art, and led by a personable young lady who knows her slice of the world and doesn't take "no" for a answer, you should give A Head in Cambodia a try. You'll learn a little, see some sights, and have a good time without the hangovers or jet lag Our Heroine suffers on our behalf.
March 6, 2025
I really wanted to give this more starts but there was just something a bit jarring and clunky about the author's delivery, which I do hope improves in time because the story itself I really enjoyed.
I stumbled upon this paperback in the only bookstore in Siem Reap selling English novels, so naturally gravitated towards it. My bookmark was the map of the Angkor area, and I used it a few times to keep up with the storyline (you may wish to open Google as you read). Tingley throws in the perfect amount of fact and insight into Khmer art and architecture and Cambodian history - you'll learn a lot but it doesn't take away from the flow of the plot. These are my favourite type of books and usually I gravitate towards historical fiction for this reason. It's hard to get the balance of fact and story right but Tingley nails it for me. There was good pace, fun dialogue and plenty to keep you guessing in terms of the plot.
Where it fell short was any kind of emotion from the characters and especially the narrator. We learn early on that she is emotionally withdrawn, but unfortunately that translates to very little feeling throughout the story. We get the main character's reactions to events (occasionally) but little else to hold onto. This was brilliantly illustrated when the 'big reveal' happens at the end of the novel, which is delivered non-ceremoniously and buried within dialogue, so much so I had to re-read it twice to understand that really WAS the apex we had been building to.
Nancy, if you ever read any reviews, I do hope you keep writing as I would love to see the progression. And an art form like a novel is a great way to inject education to a perhaps unsuspecting reader, and I for one am hungry for more easily accessible knowledge on SE Asia.
At time of this review, the second novel in the series has been published, and maybe I'll head to Indonesia to find it :)
I stumbled upon this paperback in the only bookstore in Siem Reap selling English novels, so naturally gravitated towards it. My bookmark was the map of the Angkor area, and I used it a few times to keep up with the storyline (you may wish to open Google as you read). Tingley throws in the perfect amount of fact and insight into Khmer art and architecture and Cambodian history - you'll learn a lot but it doesn't take away from the flow of the plot. These are my favourite type of books and usually I gravitate towards historical fiction for this reason. It's hard to get the balance of fact and story right but Tingley nails it for me. There was good pace, fun dialogue and plenty to keep you guessing in terms of the plot.
Where it fell short was any kind of emotion from the characters and especially the narrator. We learn early on that she is emotionally withdrawn, but unfortunately that translates to very little feeling throughout the story. We get the main character's reactions to events (occasionally) but little else to hold onto. This was brilliantly illustrated when the 'big reveal' happens at the end of the novel, which is delivered non-ceremoniously and buried within dialogue, so much so I had to re-read it twice to understand that really WAS the apex we had been building to.
Nancy, if you ever read any reviews, I do hope you keep writing as I would love to see the progression. And an art form like a novel is a great way to inject education to a perhaps unsuspecting reader, and I for one am hungry for more easily accessible knowledge on SE Asia.
At time of this review, the second novel in the series has been published, and maybe I'll head to Indonesia to find it :)
April 15, 2019
I really wanted to love this book and will try at a later date to read this again.
Loved the concept. Found the information on the art interesting and enjoyed behind the scenes look at museums.
I can’t even imagine how hard firsts in a series must be for authors. Trying to create characters in the first few pages that interest the reader enough to make them excited to read more is a tall order.
I made it through 8 chapters before giving up. The characters were all rather 1 dimensional.
The character named PP is exceptionally wealthy, and he usually only communicates with one word at a time. Sometimes up to four words but the meaning is rarely clear. As a result the dialogue in the book is very stilted and I found it annoying. It’s possible the reader was meant to see a wealthy eccentric or a stereotype of someone on the autistic spectrum.
Jenna has potential but all I really took from her was that she was taking a year away from dating. She was the curator of the Asian department at a museum so she’s clearly bright, but instead what I got was the same “woman taking a year off from men even though she doesn’t love the idea” character that appears repeatedly in mysteries and chick lit alike.
Perhaps if I had continued to read some of those issues would have resolved themselves. I found myself lacking the patience.
Loved the concept. Found the information on the art interesting and enjoyed behind the scenes look at museums.
I can’t even imagine how hard firsts in a series must be for authors. Trying to create characters in the first few pages that interest the reader enough to make them excited to read more is a tall order.
I made it through 8 chapters before giving up. The characters were all rather 1 dimensional.
The character named PP is exceptionally wealthy, and he usually only communicates with one word at a time. Sometimes up to four words but the meaning is rarely clear. As a result the dialogue in the book is very stilted and I found it annoying. It’s possible the reader was meant to see a wealthy eccentric or a stereotype of someone on the autistic spectrum.
Jenna has potential but all I really took from her was that she was taking a year away from dating. She was the curator of the Asian department at a museum so she’s clearly bright, but instead what I got was the same “woman taking a year off from men even though she doesn’t love the idea” character that appears repeatedly in mysteries and chick lit alike.
Perhaps if I had continued to read some of those issues would have resolved themselves. I found myself lacking the patience.
October 4, 2018
A Head in Cambodia combines a fascinating array of settings: small art museum, rich art collectors houses, "art tourist" destinations in Cambodia and Thailand, and even a fair amount of food and cuisine. I don't think Jenna Murphy is paid enough for what she does and puts up with, and I sure would hate to be the tour guide on her trips. The second half of the book in particular is quite good as a fast-paced thriller--you know whodunit but not how Jenna will survive. I learned a lot about the fake-art world, which provides the background for the mystery, and I learned some interesting things about the nature and interpretation of Cambodian art. What's not to like?
January 21, 2018
I really like a book that sends me on a search of the internet for pictures and information. Since I have never been to Cambodia and not likely to go this was a mystery with travelogue that I greatly enjoyed. Even to needing to duplicate an omelet meal and later chips and guacamole. I did pass on the single-malt scotch .. but here is a new author that I will look up when I'm at Left Coast Crime.
March 29, 2018
As an admirer and student of Asian art, the setting in Cambodia coupled with the museum curator as a tour guide was immediately appealing. The novel is most interesting in plot and character development coupled with detailed descriptions of the culture and the temples. My kind of mystery with" learning" thrown in!
June 3, 2018
Jenna Murphy. museum curator, leads a group of enthusiasts to Cambodia after the head of a statue was found by one of the museum's benefactors. The man who sold the head was decapitated and violence and mystery ensues.
January 28, 2019
I picked up this book at Monument Books in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. I enjoyed reading it, the author described the temples in Siem Real accurately. The mystery part of the book was interesting but the descriptions of Khmeer art were better. The ending was a bit contrived.
August 9, 2017
I enjoyed it, very readable. I liked the art history setting.
December 21, 2019
Combines art, history and mystery for a fun and suspenseful read. Interesting interaction of characters and location.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews