Advertisement
Published: December 31st 2023
Edit Blog Post
One of the good things about getting older is that the older I get the less concerned I am with looking foolish. That does not make up for the creaky knees and arthritic fingers, but it’s a start.
One of my favorite authors is Jake Needham. He writes crime and espionage novels placed in Asia, and has written a series of novels centered around Sam Tay, a Singaporean detective. Since Singapore is one of my favorite cities, and Jake is a pretty good storyteller, his novels about Inspector Sam Tay quickly became a favorite of mine.
Mr. Needham puts out a newsletter to let people know when he has a new book out, or to ask his readers their thoughts on cover art for his novels. Through his newsletter I learned that he and his wife have been living in Bangkok for a number of years. “Hmm,” thought I, “I’m going to Bangkok in a couple of weeks.” So – I emailed him and offered to take him out for coffee – or a beer. Since he lived on the other side of globe, looking foolish with this invitation had a very low probability of having much effect on
my life.
To my delight, he returned my email. We made arrangements to meet for lunch at a restaurant outside Emquartier, an upscale mall in central Bangkok. I’d seen his photo on the dust jackets of his novels, so we figured I could probably pick him out without a lot of trouble. I walked past a guy who, other than looking a little older and a little grayer, looked like his dusk jacket photo. “You look like a world-famous author,” I said, and I was right.
You know how awkward it can get to have a conversation with someone you are just meeting for the first time? There was none of that here. He was a lawyer in the US, but through a convoluted series of events ended up producing a movie in Thailand for HBO. And speaking of HBO, that network optioned a book of Jake’s called “The Big Mango” as a movie for James Gandolfini (yes, the guy from “The Sopranos”.) When Gandolfini died, the option died with him.
He has lived all over the world, from Washington to Thailand to Australia, with some interesting stories along the way. At one point I mentioned that
I was part owner of a racehorse. He perked up “So was I,” and we spent much of the next hour talking about horse racing. He had been a member of the Australian Turf Club and had raced at Royal Randwick. We agreed that watching morning workouts at dawn was a pretty fun way to start the day.
If you are interested in reading any of his books – well, of course you want to read his books – you can find them on Amazon, either in print or as an ebook. You probably won’t find them in a bookstore in the US because American publishers are convinced that Americans don’t want to read crime fiction set in Asia. I think they are wrong, and you can decide for yourself by checking out Jake’s website, cleverly labeled JakeNeedham (dot) com.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.119s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0947s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 7;
; mem: 1.1mb
D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Happy New Year Karen
Bangkok is a great place to spend the New Year. It is good seeing you traveling and blogging again. I'm glad you were brave enough to send the email. I'm glad you hot to meet the author. I will check out his works. Happy travels.