Category Archives: Crime fiction and film from Cambodia

Ghost Money now available (is that the sound of rubber hitting the road?)

Posted on August 22, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

My debut novel Ghost Money is now available through Snubnose Press.

You can get it on Amazon Books for $4.99. Other e-reading formats, Kobo, Sony, etc, to follow. If you haven’t got a Kindle, you can download an Kindle app for iPad and read it that way.

In case you haven’t already heard the pitch for Ghost Money, here it is.

Cambodia, 1996, the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency is fragmenting, competing factions of an unstable coalition government scrambling to gain the upper hand. Missing in the chaos is businessman Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan.

But Avery has made dangerous enemies and Quinlan is not the only one looking. Teaming up with Heng Sarin, a local journalist, Quinlan’s search takes him from the freewheeling capital Phnom Penh to the battle scarred western borderlands. As the political temperature soars, he is slowly drawn into a mystery that plunges him into the heart of Cambodia’s bloody past.

Ghost Money is a crime novel, but it’s also about Cambodia in the mid-nineties, a broken country, and what happens to people who are trapped in the cracks between two periods of history, locals and foreigners, the choices they make, what they do to survive.

I’m happy to say it’s already getting some good reviews from heavy hitters on the local crime scene.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Snubnose Press

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Ghost Money available August 20

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Just a quick post to let you know that my first novel Ghost Money will be released on August 20.

It’ll be available digitally through Amazon, B&N, Apple, Sony and Kobo.

Ghost Money is set in Cambodia in the mid-ninties, when the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency was fragmenting and the country’s rival coalition parties were in conflict with each other from for dominance. Missing in the chaos is businessman Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan. Quinlan’s search will take him from Phnom Penh to the country’s border with Thailand and plunge him into a mystery that plunges him into the heart of Cambodia’s bloody past.

The book has got it’s first review, by none other than veteran Australian crime writer, Garry Disher. He was nice enough to blurb the book for me and said, “Ghost Money is a fast-paced, atmospheric crime novel. Its journey into a cynical and treacherous world is tense and suspenseful.”

I’m thrilled with the comments, coming as they do from someone with Disher’s statue in Australian crime writing.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Garry Disher, Snubnose Press

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Wish You Were Here

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Wish You Were Hear sort of blind sided me. That doesn’t happen very often.

I’d been hearing about it for a while without actually putting all the pieces around it together: an Australian made suspense, partly shot in southern Cambodia, backed by Blue Tongue Films, the outfit behind Animal Kingdom and The Square, two solid local crime films I’d favourably reviewed on this site previously.

I can’t say too much about Wish You Were Here without giving away the plot. It fits nicely into the genre of suspense film dealing with what happens when nice middle class white people go somewhere exotic and exciting, a place where they’re freed from the expectations of their everyday lives, and behave badly, with serious consequences for their mental and physical health.

In this instance, the place is the tourist beach resort of Sihanoukville on Cambodia’s southern coast. The nice middle class people are two couples, pregnant Alice (Felicity Price) and her husband Dave (Blue Tongue regular Joel Edgerton), and Alice’s Younger sister Steph (Teresa Palmer) and her charming and mysterious boyfriend Jeremy (Antony Starr).

Their exciting, carefree holiday adventure is brilliantly established in the first moments of the film, culminating in a drug fuelled dance party. Next thing we see is Dave staggering half naked and blood stained through the harsh dawn light.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime film, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Joel Edgerton

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Great crime reads set in Asia

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Okay, I’ve sat patiently through the hype about Scandinavian crime fiction, which shows no sign of ending, only to read recently that the next big thing in crime fiction is central Europe.

I keep thinking people will eventually discover Asia as a fascinating place to set crime fiction, but it looks like I’ll have to keep on waiting on that score.

Not that there aren’t some great crime reads set in the region. A few weeks ago I wrote the following post on some of my favourites for the site, Crime Fiction Lover. One book I could’ve included but didn’t was David Peace’s Tokyo Year Zero. One CFL reader suggested the books of Seicho Matsumoto. I’d live to hear other suggestions as I’m sure there are heaps more.

Jade Lady Burning – Martin Limon

Low profile crime writer Martin Limon has so far written six books featuring Sueno and Bascom, officers in the Criminal Intelligence Division of the US military based in South Korea, and a seventh is on the way.

Jade Lady Burning was the first of the series, written in 1992, and for my money it’s still one of the best. Sueno and Bascom are assigned to investigate the brutal murder of a local prostitute which turns into something much more sinister.… Read more

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Posted in Angela Savage, Christopher G Moore, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Crime fiction and film from China, Crime fiction and film from South Korea, Crime fiction and film from Thailand, Don Winslow, Martin Limon

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My manuscript finds a home

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 9 Comments

This is the blog entry I’ve been hoping to post on Pulp Curry for a long time now.

My unpublished manuscript, currently titled Cambodia Darkness and Light, has found a home.

It’s going to be published as an e-book in the United States next year by the good folks at Snubnose Press.

Haven’t heard of them?

Hmmm, perhaps that not surprising, especially if you are in Australia. But you’re going to. And soon.

Snubnose is a small outfit that specialises in crime fiction e-books, but they have big plans.

They have a great slate of authors planned for publication in 2012, including Heath Lowrance (whose first book The Bastard Hard I reviewed on this site several months ago), Nik Korpon, Chad Rohrbacher, fellow Aussie Helen Fitzgerald and Dan O’Shea, just to name a few of them.

That’s some serious emerging and established indie crime writing talent and I’m thrilled to be able to count myself among them.

It’s also great to get a crack at the US e-book market, which is far bigger than it is in Australia and growing at a rapid pace.

Of course, you’ll also be able to get the e-book here.

The blurb on the Snubnose site describes my book as “a hard-boiled novel about a Vietnamese-Australian ex-cop searching for a missing businessman in mid-90s Cambodia that brings to mind the novels of Martin Limón.”

… Read more

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Posted in Crime fiction and film from Cambodia, Snubnose Press

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