Angkor Cloth Angkor Gold

Cambodia, An ancient Kingdom of Wonder. After the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime, hundreds of thousands of refugees – victims and Khmer Rouge soldiers – flee into Thailand as the Vietnamese invade Cambodian in 1979. In the disorder of one refugee camp, a killer targets young women. But with so much chaos in the camps, nothing is done and no one seems to care. With many refugees expatriated to France, the killer is among them, and continues to strike, in Paris and across Europe. Three decades later, and two murders in Phnom Penh have the same modus operandi as those previous deaths. Could it be the same killer? Can Brigadier General Chamreun and Lieutenant Sophie Chang discover the murderer's identity before they claim another victim?

Angkor Cloth Angkor Gold (Murder Mystery)

By Steven W. Palmer

Saraswati Publishing Cambodia

ASIN # B07K6MF5YT

Price $5.99 (Kindle)

196 Pages

Rating 5-Stars

Cambodia, 2017: The Minister calls in Brigadier General Hoen Chamreun, a young military man, and introduces him to young police officer, Sopheak Chang. They are being assigned to a recent murder case that may involve the killer of the Minister’s sister four decades earlier. The killer is targeting young Khmer prostitutes, and the modus operandi matches murders committed in Cambodia, Thailand refugee camps, France, and Italy. The minister’s sister was not a prostitute, but also killed by the same person. And he wants closure, and the murderer brought to justice.

This was an interesting case, both a current homicide and a cold case investigation, and the investigators dig into the background of the old murders, hoping to find some clue that will tie the person to the current murders. Chamreun is an experienced soldier who has made a name for himself and his unit, and now working with Sophie, a Cambodian that was raised in America and trained as a homicide detective before returning to Cambodia. Both are experienced and want to bring the case to a close.

Readers are cautioned to pay attention to the dates. I didn’t and was confused through half the story until I decided to go back and look at the dates. The investigators bring in Sue Chapman from Interpol, plus use a computer hacker to help uncover records not easily obtainable, and correlate lists of names into a possible list of suspects. The narrative has two main POVs, that of the murderer, and that of Chamreun, but head hop a few times to Sophie and Sue Chapman. I’ve read numerous murder stories set in Cambodia and Thailand, all set in the sex industry, but this novel is more in-depth than mere sex. It goes deeper into the criminal mind and why the killer is targeting prostitutes. The title gives us a clue, but I won’t go into that. Too much detail could give the story away. There is a nice twist at the end of the story. Highly recommended.

Tom Johnson

Author of THE MAN IN THE BLACK FEDORA

The Garonsky Missile

Colonel Tobin’s Private Army #7: “The Garonsky Missile” by Alan Caillou. Colonel Matt Tobin was killed in battle during the last private war, and what’s left of the private army has drifted away. Major Paul Tobin, the colonel’s son, is living in California when an airline stewardess comes to his farm with news that Clara Abbyad, an Israeli female agent he worked with once, is in Cambodia en route to meet up with General Quong Trek, a ruthless military leader that kills and tortures people he doesn’t trust, or who don’t please him. Paul, afraid for her life, calls in Pamela George to find some of his men for a rescue mission. Soon he leads a handful of men, including a couple new soldiers, into Cambodia to find and rescue the girl. The final plot is weak, and though the do rescue the girl and kill the general, there isn’t much else accomplished. Besides Clara and Pamela, Paul Tobin, Rick Meyers and Cass Fragonard are all that’s left of the old crew. Two new men are brought in, Seth Karem and a pilot named Bob Fellowes. It was time the series came to an end.

Golden Temptress

Golden Temptress (original title The Broken Gate, 1948) by Charles Grayson (Charles Wright Gray). Jack Shepherd, a grade-A heel, is a freelance writer and an adventurer in foreign lands where he hopes to make some money, legal or otherwise. He travels with two companions: Frenchman Jean-Louis Lemar, his personal valet, etc., and a beautiful Canadian singer, Peggy George. They are in Saigon on what he believes is to assure a liquor smuggler that a buyer has the money for the product. It’s all a scam, and the shipment is weapons for rebels. However, now he’s not so sure of the deal. But when Shepherd meets the buyer, the beautiful Bijou, a Eurasian, whose father was French and her mother Vietnamese, he learns she doesn’t have the money. Vietnam is under French colonialism at present, but war is threatened, and Inspector Duphaine has an idea Shepherd is up to no good. He senses what it is all about. Different angles, different sides, each ready to double-cross the others. They travel to Pnom-Penh, Cambodia in search of a treasure temple in the jungle near Angkor, the fabled Emerald Buddha of Yacodharapura. And Shepherd is as bad as the rest. In the story, Sheppard meets the King of Cambodia; in truth, the author actually hung out with the King of Cambodia when he was in that part of the world. He was well traveled, and was a Hollywood screenwriter with numerous credits, including “Battle Hymn” and “Barbarian And The Geisha”. This is a great story, though it’s hard to like any of the characters (except Peggy George). Shepherd is a heel to the very end, and then comes the final, unexpected double-cross.