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Bangkok pulp writer James Newman has hammered out another shot-from-the-hip fast-as-they-come thriller, featuring recovering alcoholic and PI Joe Dylan drifting through the Zone, a sly reference to William Burrough’s Interzone – a place where all races lead to the bottom, all smiles are false and everyone is out to kill everyone else for a few bucks. Like Burroughs, Newman both despises and admires the darkness he has witnessed and he manages to harvest a modicum of sloth and violence in his newest story.
Joe Dylan gets involved with a bar girl who turns up dead soon after. As he begins to investigate her suspicious suicide he slips into a criminal web of violent fetish sex, human sacrifice and black magic and turns from the hunter to the hunted, with blow dart shooting killers of uncertain gender on his trail. Even dwarfs and the Ramayana appear in cameos.
In fact, all the standard ghouls of the Bangkok night turn out, from psychotic ladyboys to flesh eating monitor lizards. The writing is fluid and assured and Dylan’s journey through a world so rancid that the grime almost oozes through the screen – if one were to read the e-book edition of Red Night Zone – never falters. The circumstances of this particularly tragic reality are well explored, perhaps, occasionally, too deeply.
The heart of Newman’s literary mission - the crossing of Beat style writing and observation’s of Thailand turgid world of sex-pats - is not as obvious as it might sound. The seedy Thai-foreign underworld is easy to describe and difficult to bring to life. Exuberant gaudiness and total degradation, detachment and vast suffering, extreme highs and shattering lows are opposites intrinsic to the Bangkok night reality yet difficult to convey without either descending into tabloid journalism styles or out and out sleaze. Newman, by looking back to the Beats and the mass paperback culture of the 40s and 50s, is just far enough away from depravity to sail his ship. For the most part his observations on the monstrous are spot-on, though his notion that the foreign Johns are the greater victims in the sordid death-sex-life-dance that moves along the streets of downtown Bangkok may not be palatable nor agreeable to all readers. But that doesn't stop James Newman finding his dark corner and rolling around in it. The course is charted, there’s wind in the sails and Joe Dylan is likely to revisit the Zone somewhere near you soon. He will just slip onto a barstool, turn his head and the chapter will start something like this: The Nazi bargirl lit a cigarette and asked for a drink.
Of course she did.

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"The only thing I know about books, is that they should be like a woman's dress: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting." So says protagonist, Joe Dylan in James A. Newman's RED NIGHT ZONE - BANGKOK CITY. I agree with Joe and this book delivers on both counts.

My second Joe Dylan book and while I do not always like the world Joe Dylan sees, I always enjoy the way Joe Dylan sees the world. Particularly the world he and I sometimes share, the murky red night zone of Bangkok, Thailand. Former London insurance investigator Dylan joins the big leagues in this caper by agreeing to look for the murderer of a Bangkok bar girl that Joe coincidentally used to know. Heartless Joe even had a soft spot for the mutilated lady.

It's a tale of black magic, human weaknesses, inhuman realities and a fair amount of frog scratching going on in the background. James A. Newman continues to impress me with his writing style and story telling, even if he hasn't entirely given up on his lizard fixation. Lizards need love too, I reckon.

In this Dylan adventure he sticks to Bangkok, perhaps too much? I am of the mindset that Bangkok and an aging Jack Nicholson now play their best roles as supporting actors, in the background, secure in their talent by giving up the best lines to other players. There were times when I would have have liked a bit more of Carina, the ex-lover of the murdered Monika or Janey, who has flown to Bangkok to check up on her Dad before he loses the plot and the family money in the Land of Smiles like so many before him, but that may be because I have grown to know those characters called Bangkok and The Zone over the past dozen years, while the other characters are new to me. Other readers may find those familiar characters fascinating, which they are and Newman does nail them both.

Newman also gets his antagonists, twisted mute muay Thai boxer, hexed brother and his perverted sister down cold, very cold. The writing style at times reminds me of Sergeant Joe Friday from the Dragnet TV Show, as if written by John Burdett. There were some really brilliant elements to this story coupled with two minor weak plot points in my opinion, but suspension of disbelief is part of the deal when you sign up for the ride. And it is a very entertaining ride. Newman is someone to watch out for. He continues to compete in a talented pool when it comes to Bangkok based crime fiction. But if you have read Needham, Moore, Barrett, Hallinan or Burdett and like any or all of them or just like a good bloody Bangkok yarn, give Newman a try. He's got skills. Were it not for a plot point involving the proverbial money filled suitcase, I could have easily gone five bones.

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Hallucinatory journey... November 5, 2012
By Pentargo
Format:Kindle EditionAn excellent and mind-spinning trip through the lesser seen back alleys of Bangkok, this novel manages to brilliantly capture the interplay of the various shadowy figures that occupy the city. The numerous voices, both Western and Thai, are compelling and believable. Of course the real star of the book, as the title suggests, is Bangkok itself - a place where everything is available for those who seek it, albeit at a price.

The novel is plotted and paced superbly, and is a genuine page turner. The language is tight, and there is no padding to be found. Overall, would recommend for anyone with an interest in either noir or the region itself.

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I just finished reading James Newman’s latest noir mystery Bangkok City. What a read!! James is obviously comfortable in the noir style and, because of this, the reader easily slides into the Bangkok James skillfully etches.

However Bangkok City is not a case of style over substance which all too often is the case with noir fiction. In James’ hands the style only serves to enhance a gripping plot. The character development is efficient allowing the reader to develop empathy here, a bit of disgust there, and overwhelming sympathy in one forlorn character.

The only criticism I can think of is with the title itself. Unfortunately the “Bangkok” theme has been plowed so thoroughly, mostly by hacks I might add, that James’ terrific piece of work may be ignored as just another attempt by a farang to describe the seedy aspects of Bangkok. Of course, Bangkok is so much more than that, and so is James’ gritty tale.

James Newman’s Bangkok City is available at www.bangkokbooks.com. Buy The Book!!!

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By Tom Tuohy
Format:Kindle EditionWhen a friend suggested I read James Newman's new book, Bangkok City, I did so with a sense of trepidation. For one thing, despite 15 years in the Kingdom, I'd never heard of him. I'd read the better known expat writers of course, like C. G. Moore, Stephen Leather, Colin Pipperel, and William Page, and I enjoyed their writing immensely.

I'd also assumed that James Newman's genre was a mish mash of the usual sexpat genre that we see on many a book shelf in Kinokuniya or Asia Books: a staple diet of essentially the same tawdry story - overweight, divorced expat, seeks new life in Thailand, meets a bar girl half his age, falls in love, takes care of her family, till finally one day he wakes up realising he's been fleeced of his savings and, with nothing left and having been shorn of the last vestiges of his self esteem, he throws himself off a condo in Pattaya.

I was wrong. James Newman's writing is anything but tawdry or predictable. His characters are full of home spun wisdom and his sense of storytelling, including pace and characterization, is extremely good. His knowledge, not just of the way Thais think and act, but of the places they inhabit, mentally as well as physically, is unique among expat writers currently in the Kingdom. His ear for the subtle nuances of language, both in Thai and English, show a world that few expats ever see. His inside knowledge of Buddhism and Brahmanism, and the way both religions, new and old, weave around the general, day-today Thai superstitions encapsulated in magic and doled out by the maw doos (psychics), is incisive and well researched.

Despite a few typos here and there, and the occasional structural flaw, his ability to construct a sentence and to add clever imagery also suggests he's destined for greater things in the literary sphere. The Bangkok in Bangkok City is reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. The very notion of the city is shown for what it is: a repository of broken dreams and unquenched desires; a city populated by people who are not what they seem; corrupt cops, ex-Muay Thai boxers cum gangsters, spiritually and emotionally bankrupt expats, and fatally ambitious Thai hookers ready to sell their souls for the promise of a better tomorrow; a world that, were he still alive, Charles Bukowski would have recognised in all its tacky urban splendor.

With the exception of C. G. Moore and Rattavut Lapcharoensap, few have accurately depicted what it's like to live in Thailand as well as James Newman. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to discover the real underbelly of Thai living: a place where things can be had for a price, but not necessarily one worth paying; a place where you can enter into a Mephistoclean pact just as long as you know that when you reach the proverbial checkout counter, you may have to pay the ultimate price and give up the thing you value most: your very soul.