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Once upon a time, Will Keller was a famous war photographer. Now he's a burnt-out case, washed up in Phnom Penh and spending his days and nights in a lethal fog of drugs, booze, and sex. But his descent into a kind of slow-motion suicide is diverted when Kara Saito, a beautiful young woman, begs him to find her missing sister, June.
CAMBODIA NOIR will appeal to readers who like anything from wild west adventure novels, through to classic noir styled lone wolf investigations, set in a country with a difficult recent past, and a fraught present. Because it is a combination of all of those elements, and then some.
Dark and violent, with explicit drug taking and sex, Nick Seeley has written a book that makes no attempt at all to cushion the blows that his characters, and his readers, encounter whilst reading. It's a tough, no apologies tale set in a society that's broken. So broken that life is cheap, money is everything, and the levels of corruption and organised crime are positively breathtaking.
Needless to say, not one for fans of cosies. Readers of this book are dragged through the mire along with a protagonist who's as guilty of some horrible behaviour as many of those he encounters. He's also one of those blokes capable of enduring a positively epic level of beatings, sleep deprivation and drug taking. He's also one of those blokes too with a moral compass which might swing wildly, but is there, and his desire to find the missing June is as much about finding the girl, as it is about understanding what the hell she and her sister are up to.
Highly recommended if you like your noir on the darkest of dark sides.
§ Karen Chisholm has been reading crime fiction since she could hold a book upright. When not reading she builds websites and pretends to be a farmer. Her website, AustCrimeFiction has been covering fiction from Australia and New Zealand since 2006: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/
Reviewed by Karen Chisholm, February 2015
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