Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Thriller / suspense fiction

CAMBODIA NOIR

Nicholas Seeley

For fans of Alex Garland, John Burdett and Don Winslow, an arresting debut thriller set in contemporary Cambodia, about an American woman who disappears into the Phnom Penh underworld, and the photojournalist who tracks her through the clues left in her diary.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia: The end of the line. Lawless, drug-soaked, forgotten—it's where bad journalists go to die. For once-great war photographer Will Keller, that’s kind of a mission statement: he spends his days floating from one score to the next, taking any job that pays; his nights are a haze of sex, drugs, booze and brawling. But Will’s spiral toward oblivion is interrupted by Kara Saito, a beautiful young woman who shows up and begs Will to help find her sister, June, who disappeared during a stint as an intern at the local paper.

There’s a world of bad things June could have got mixed up in: the Phnom Penh underworld is in an uproar after a huge drug bust; a local reporter has been murdered in what looks like a political hit; and the government and opposition are locked in a standoff that could throw the country into chaos at any moment. Will's best clue is her diary: an unsettled collection of experiences, memories and dreams, reflecting a young woman at once repelled and fascinated by the chaos of Cambodia. As Will digs deeper into June’s past, he uncovers one disturbing fact after another about the missing girl and her bloody family history. In the end, the most dangerous thing in Cambodia may be June herself.

Propulsive, electric, and exotically enthralling, Cambodia Noir explores what happens when we venture into dark places… when we get in over our heads… when we get lost.

Nick Seeley is an international journalist and humanitarian analyst, based, over the past decade, in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. His work has appeareed in The Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy Magazine, Middle East Report, and Traveler's Tales among others. His fiction and criticism has been published in Strange Horizons. He is
originally from Fairfax, Virginia. This is his first novel.

Available products
Book Published 2016-03-15 by Scribner
Book Published 2016-03-15 by Scribner

Comments

he more dissolute photojournalist Will Keller looks for a disappeared young intern, the more he needs to watch his back. Monsoon-fueled Phnom Penh rumbles with murderous cops, an impending military coup, machete assassinations, and swerving motorbike rides on pitch-black roads. Nick Seeley’s Cambodia Noir is a mangrove swamp of a thriller you won’t put down. A terrific read.

Cambodia Noir is not for the faint-hearted. Nick Seeley’s debut novel takes the reader into the Inner Circle of Hell: Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a city of drugs, death, and violence. Seeley’s characters are alive, until they’re not, and his plotting and pacing are as sharp and original as his writing.

International journalist Seeley’s debut novel puts the traditional noir story on ’roids… The fast-moving narrative is like riding through Phnom Penh’s streets on the back of a motorcycle…delivers an up-close, jarring look at a city rocked with unrest and an atmospheric take on that enduring noir protagonist, the dissolute foreign correspondent. A sinuous, shattering thriller.

If ever a case was made for place as character in a novel, Seeley makes it here with scene after nightmarish scene...This is distinctive work. The plotting is wily and entertaining, the take on Cambodia, trenchant and disturbing.

The fast-moving narrative is like riding through Phnom Penh’s streets on the back of a motorcycle, as Keller does on his way to assignments. Seeley, himself a journalist in Cambodia in 2003, delivers an up-close, jarring look at a city rocked with unrest and an atmospheric take on that enduring noir protagonist, the dissolute foreign correspondent. A sinuous, shattering thriller.

Seeley gets Phnom Penh in the same way that John Burdett gets Bangkok, with descriptions so vivid that even if Seeley never mentioned the city by name, anyone who had ever spent time there would recognize it immediately. The thriller unfolds at a breakneck pace, with a backdrop of unrest and upheaval, and characters that blur (or totally obliterate) the lines between good and bad. Seeley impresses on every count.

A superb debut from a talent to watch in the coming years. It's quite a tale, one that sweeps the reader into peril and passion, all unraveling at the perfect pace. A treat from start to finish.

Aus/NZ: S&S Australia

A compelling story of depravity and redemption with echoes of Twin Peaks and the bleakest works of Jim Thompson.

Gritty, atmospheric… a powerhouse debut from a future star.

Nick Seeley’s Cambodia Noir is a tense and compelling neo-noir. This striking debut makes it clear that Seeley is a fine storyteller and a master of narrative voice. Highly recommended for readers looking for edgy and artfully crafted suspense.

When you think there is nothing new on the mystery scene, a debut blasts into your orbit and excites all the feelings that reading a great novel once bestowed. Imagine a Graham Greene of the zeitgeist, sprinkled with the audacity of John Burdett, fuelled,with a narrative reminiscent of the early Deaver or indeed King in his prime, and then add the finesse, the art of James Sallis and you have Cambodia Noir. It is that good, heartbreaking and brutal, insightful and deeply informative, as if Paul Theroux suddenly wrote an Ellroy homage. It strikes chords of all the great novelists. Best of all, it re-establishes noir as not only a serious and imaginative genre, but manages to place it in a whole new dimension of exciting possibilities.

How do you sum up a book as layered as Cambodia Noir? It's a riveting sequence of meticulously choreographed psychological strip teases. It's an eat-you-up-suck-you-in page turner. Cambodia Noir is refreshingly rich with human emotion and unsolvable problems. Seeley is an imaginative storyteller with a journalist's eye for detail. You feel that in every page of this bubbling cauldron of a book.