From Publishers Weekly
A fictional version of the author serves as the narrator of Berlinski's uneven first novel, a thriller set in Thailand. Mischa Berlinski, a reporter who's moved to northern Thailand to be with his schoolteacher girlfriend, Rachel, hears from his friend Josh about the suicide of Martiya van der Leun, an American anthropologist, in a Thai jail, where she was serving 50 years for murder. As Mischa begins to investigate Martiya's life and supposed crimes, he becomes increasingly obsessed with the woman. The complications that arise have the potential to be riveting, but the chatty narrative voice takes too many irrelevant detours to build much suspense. Still, Berlinski, who has been a journalist in Thailand, vividly portrays the exotic setting and brings depth and nuance to his depictions of the Thais. Buried within the excess verbiage is a lean, interesting tale about, among many other things, the differences between modern and tribal cultures.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From AudioFile
William Dufris delivers a sterling performance of this novel of anthropologists and missionaries who are competing with each other for influence over the hill tribes of northern Thailand. It begins with a fictional version of the author, also named Mischa, stumbling across the story of Martiya, a Berkeley-trained anthropologist who committed suicide in a Thai prison, where she was serving a fifty-year sentence for murdering a missionary. Then things get complicated. Dufris manages a host of regional American accents and, even more remarkably, offers believable Thais speaking English. With pacing and changes of tone, his sensitive reading brings the listener inside the three radically different cultures of Thai hill tribes, evangelical Christian Americans, and academic anthropologists. R.E.K. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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