The Risk of Infidelity Index (Vincent Calvino Series #9)

by Christopher G. Moore

Overview

In the twenty years he has lived in Bangkok, Christopher G. Moore has written nine novels starring Vincent Calvino, a disbarred American lawyer working as a PI in the steamy Thai capital. Internationally acclaimed, the prize-winning novels have been translated into ten languages, and were first published in North America in 2007, with The Risk of Infidelity Index, the latest in the series. When Calvino’s surveillance of a drug piracy ring ends in definitive video evidence, it looks like his fortunes are about to turn. But when Calvino’s client dies of a heart attack, and he finds the body of a murdered massage girl downstairs, the authorities get suspicious of the farang in the wrong place at the wrong time, twice. To make matters worse, with the dead man unlikely to pay, Calvino is forced to take on a job he doesn’t want, trailing the spouses of three expat housewives who have been rattled by “The Risk of Infidelity Index,” a handbook that ranks Bangkok as the city where men are most likely to stray. Unfortunately for Calvino, jealous wives tend to be unhappy, regardless of the results, and drug pirates aren’t the type to play nice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802143983
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	01/06/2009
Series:	Vincent Calvino Series , #9
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian writer who once taught law at the University of British Columbia. After his first book His Lordship¿s Arsenal was published in New York to a critical acclaim in 1985, Moore became a full-time writer and has so far written 22 novels, a non-fiction and one collection of inter-locked short stories.

Editorial Reviews

As alluring as it is disorienting, The Risk of Infidelity Index introduces American readers to Christopher G. Moore's exotic private-eye mysteries set in Bangkok and featuring an American expatriate named Vincent Calvino…Moore's flashy style successfully captures the dizzying contradictions of this vertiginous landscape.
—The New York Times

Marilyn Stasio

A veteran Bangkok shamus, born and bred in New York, makes his American debut. Not many private eyes have offices upstairs from a massage parlor, and the apparent suicide of Jazz, a female employee of the parlor, One Hand Clapping, does nothing to improve the neighborhood. But Vincent Calvino, the PI upstairs, has graver problems. Andrew Danielson, the attorney who'd promised him $10,000 to dig up evidence of pharmaceutical piracy, dies hours after Jazz, who turns out to be his lover. And since Danielson's arrangement with Calvino was off the books, his law firm refuses to honor his contract. So Calvino, stuck for a way to make enough money to pay off his debts and maybe even bring a bit more stability to his surroundings by purchasing the massage parlor, follows the advice of his friend McPhail, who's met three expatriate wives in an Italian cooking class. Since Bangkok, according to a text called The Risk of Infidelity Index, is the most likely spot in the world for men to cheat on their wives, Calvino will offer his professional services to the women, each of them all but certain her husband has a bit on the side. Though Moore devotes little attention to the expats and their domestic difficulties, he takes the time to link their paranoia to a web of corruption and murder. Tough, wisecracking Calvino is nothing special, but the darkly raffish Bangkok milieu is a treat. Agent: Bridget Wagner/Sagalyn Literary Agency

Kirkus Reviews