Earl Norman

The Earl Norman books are becoming extremely rare, and publishers don’t seem to be interested in reprinting the series. The only way some of us may ever have all the stories is for collectors to scan and type the stories into PDF to swap with other collectors. I have already completed PDFs of HANG ME IN HONG KONG and KILL ME IN ROPPONGI. I am working on KILL ME IN YOKOSUKA. If other collectors would do the same for some of the other books, we could eventually have PDFs of all ten books. Why not help? I can be contacted at fadingshadows40@gmail.com

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

The Ming Inheritance

The Ming Inheritance (Murder Mystery)
By T. Hunt Locke
Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN #978-1482680638
358 Pages
Price $12.99 (paperback)
Price $3.99 (Kindle)
Rating 3-Stars

Sam Collins, a former Boston City police detective, is happily retired in Chiang Mai, Thailand when his world is turned upside down. Innocently helping a friend track down a colleague Sam suddenly finds himself entangled in a mystery over 600 hundred years old. From the picturesque mountains of Mae Hong Song to the seedy go-go bars of Pattaya, Sam is lured into a race against time and history

When a drug lord murders Detective Collins’ family, Sam Collins kills him vigilante-style, and is forced to retire from the Boston Police Department where he worked undercover to stop drug trafficking. Instead of retiring to Florida, where 99% of these retired police detectives seem to go, Sam goes to Thailand, and that caught my interest in the story, as I was tired of all the retired detectives in Florida and wanted to see if Thailand would work out. New York city attorney, Jon Brochstein also retires and moves to Thailand where he opens a private detective agency. He and Sam Collins are old friends. One of Jon’s local detectives is missing and Jon asks Sam to look into the case. Oddly there seems to be a buried treasure involved and people are being killed to protect the secret.

The novel is well written, but could have used an editor. The author turns this little mystery into a travelogue and history lesson of Thailand, which made me want to go back to the Florida detectives. I’m not sure how old Collins is supposed to be, but remember he’s retired from the Boston Police Department, plus he goes through several colleges for diplomas, so I’m thinking he’s no youngster; yet his description and actions make him sound young and vibrant. Big, tough, and handsome of course: all the girls want to make love to him. So there is lots of descriptive sex added to the story, giving even less space for the mystery. Plus his desire for messages throws the mystery even more into the background. Another point that upset me the author gives special names to the villains. The villains are Wayne Travers and William Attenborn; their special names are Tun Perak and Iskandar. So now we have to remember who’s who when these four names pop up. If that wasn’t bad enough we have Professor Jiriporn Chaisaen who is given the name of Ajarn Lak. Personally, I wasn’t impressed with this first Sam Collins mystery set in Thailand. I’m hoping the sequels are better. However, if you want to learn about Thailand and it’s ancient history, then I highly recommend this as a travelogue and history of the country, with a little murder on the side.

Tom Johnson
Author of THE MAN IN THE BLACK FEDORA