Why a Booktrail?
1990s: The third installment of a great crime series set in Thailand with an Australian expat who speaks three languages as the main character.
The Dying Beach ( Jane Keeney #3)
What you need to know before your trail
Jayne Keeney is an Australian expat private investigator working in Thailand.
Her partner, also her partner in their up and coming private investigation agency Rajiv Patel, is with her on holiday in Krabi on the coast. However, when their tour guide is found dead, obviously murdered, Jayne and Rajiv are thrown head first in to a case with a difference. One which the local police seem to regard as a simple death that is nothing out of the ordinary . But Jayne continues to dig – finding the girls room mate and a notebook which threatens to spill a whole more secrets.
Travel Guide
Well for us the real thrill here is the multicultural setting of this great crime series. Only the third installment and we’re still captivated by the Australian expat speaking three languages, living in Thailand, with her ‘foreign’ boyfriend trying to solve a case with no help from the local police.
We imagine that it’s not easy setting a crime story in a ‘foreign’ country that does justice to its setting and people, without judging or glamourising things but this book explored a lot of things about Thailand and this situation very well.
Jayne knows and respects the country well and Rajiv is keen to learn. When the find that Pla was involved with some local environment projects and that a certain notebook is being hunted by those who killed her, the theme of how damage is being done to the Thai coast due to fishing etc was good to see explored.
The difference in Jayne and Rajiv’s beliefs was also interesting to learn of – she wants her fortune told by putting a five baht coin in to a laughing Budda machine. Rajiv refuses.
The subject of damage to the environment in Thailand was a very interesting and serious backdrop to the story but never got in the way of the plot or the burgeoning relationship.
Lots of lovely evocative observations of cultural differences too – a tourist facility is described as being ‘weighed down with dust’,and one man states how his uncle treats ‘his new mobile phone the way he treated his employees, as if it couldn’t be trusted to work unless he was shouting at it.’
Where Next?
