From Boston to Bangkok: The Truth in Fiction

By Tom Plate

Almost everyone I know wants to be like Spenser. The fictional Boston-based private investigator stood for almost all the right things.

This P.I. thought clearly, acted quickly, bonded with the good guys, wasted the bad guys, and always knew the right thing to do and say. And could this boy ever whip up a gourmet meal! But don’t ask about the private eye’s first name, his creator didn’t give him one, much less his secret recipes; and don’t be critical — remember, Superman himself got only one name.

The famed Spenser novels (37 of them, from 1973) were beloved by millions of readers. Many were huge bestsellers. Even readers who lived in Boston learned new secrets about Boston life with Spenser as their tour guide.


Fictional heroes fill in reality’s gaps and disappointments. This celebrated literary hero created by American author Robert B. Parker hails from the macho-man tradition of Philip Marlowe and even secret agent James Bond.  The latter, concocted by former British intelligence officer Ian Fleming, hit bookshelves at a time (fifties/sixties) when the British were not feeling so great about themselves. They had won the war but lost an empire and were sliding into mediocrity. Its politicians were as exciting as pub food and couldn’t do anything right. Sir James was able to beat back bad guys without spilling one drop of his dry martini. His fellow countrymen thought him more like how they wanted to be.

Reality is often too much to take, don’t you think? Consider Thailand — “the Land of Smiles.” Who’s laughing now? Today it’s a maudlin muddle in a political puddle. Thank heavens, therefore, for artists who can conjure up a hero as wise and snappy as the private eye named Calvino (who in this case does get a first name: Vincent). Thanks to the impressive artistry of Canadian expat writer Christopher G. Moore, Calvino, who is cleaner than a guardian angel, pries the lid off the real Thailand to look deep into the sewer of down-and-dirty corruption. Writes Moore, a former law professor: “No one gets something for nothing in Thailand…. Doing a deal in Thailand is like buying subprime mortgages.” This 11th Calvino novel is aptly titled “The Corruptionist,” and is graced with riveting cover art by Bangkok-based expressionist painter Chris Coles that somehow drills deep into the psyche of the fiery Thai underworld.

This pull-no-punches Parker spirit bobs to the surface in another Southeast Asian country: Singapore. We must thank lady writer Shamini Flint for bringing us Inspector Singh (another one-name wonder).

Portly, poorly dressed, always perspiring, Singh, however, is smarter than even your average Singaporean math student, and is glued to following the truth. In “Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder,” the second in a series with a third novel coming, a gorgeous model around whom men hopelessly orbit is said to have whacked her husband. Singh believes otherwise and his superiors send him up to Malaysia to “assist” the police in their investigation.

This is where the fun begins, for Singapore and Malaysia sometimes get along no better than North and South Korea. So the story gets nasty and tasty but in the end — you guessed it — Lady Knockout in fact turns out 
to be innocent.

Another character right out of the Robert B. Parker casting-book is Central Narcotics Bureau senior officer Jimmy Tan. He gives a whole new meaning to the term “Singapore party-pooper.” From the pen of English expat Neil Humphreys, Tan makes no apologies whatsoever for his country’s so-called “draconian” anti-drug laws. He knows in his heart that drug dealers are scum and their nefarious networks nothing less than spider webs of societal cancer. When caught and convicted, they will hang, and so he cheers. Call me boring and predictable, he intimates to the reader, but my streets are quiet and my family grows up in one of the safest countries in the world — you have a problem with that? This is the classic proud-to-be-a-Singaporean speaking in national straight talk.

Plot-wise, Humphreys’ deliciously entertaining “Match Fixer” is about corruption in Southeast Asian sports (yes, this happens even in Singapore, though of course the book is just fiction, right?). Is the real Singapore knowable better through unofficial fiction than official nonfiction? That’s the kind of question all of these fine detective-fiction writers inevitably raise.  Whatever the answer, they each honour the memory of Spenser P I and his creator Robert B. Parker with their artistry. Alas, this brilliant master of the detective genre passed away the other day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 77. He will be greatly missed, but his legacy will endure. You can see that in these wonderful books whose fictional detectives tell real stories about our lives today without boring the living daylights out of us in the process.

Tom Plate, a board member of the Pacific Century Institute and a member of the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles, is writing a trilogy of books on major Asian political figures

Originally published January 26, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.