The Nature of Things

The Fourth Watcher by Timothy Hallinan My rating: 3 of 5 stars Poke Rafferty is a half Filipino, half Anglo American living in Bangkok. He is a writer, author of a series of travel books with the title Looking for Trouble in... wherever. This is the second book in Timothy Hallinan's series featuring this character. Poke has put together a family of himself, his fiancee Rose, who is a former go-go dancer, and his newly adopted daughter Miaow, a former street kid. They live together in his apartment and he is looking forward to marrying Rose and living happily ever after. His idyllic life in interrupted when the cleaning service co-owned by Rose and another woman becomes involved, through no fault of their own, in a counterfeit money scheme. The women find themselves under investigation by local police and a Secret Service Agent who is there because some of the counterfeit money is American. Poke, of course, jumps in to try to help them and gets on the wrong side of the Secret Serv...

A Nail Through the Heart by Timothy Hallinan My rating: 4 of 5 stars Phillip "Poke" Rafferty is a half Irish, half Filipino American ex-pat travel writer living in Bangkok. He has a series of travel books called Looking for Trouble in... , as in Looking for Trouble in Shanghai or Looking for Trouble in the Philippines . When he came to look for trouble in Bangkok, he lost his heart and he stayed. He fell in love with Bangkok, but he also fell in love with Rose, an ex go-go dancer/prostitute, now turned entrepreneur who is trying to set up a cleaning business. But he really lost his heart to Miaow, an eight-year-old homeless girl, a wary and damaged street child whom he has taken into his life and whom he wants to adopt. He is trying to establish this blended family of himself, Rose, and Miaow. Poke makes a little money with his travel books and articles but not enough to make the adoption of Miaow possible. He needs money to grease the wheels of Thai bureaucracy. His police...