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Vincent Calvino #13
Missing In Rangoon by Moore, Christopher G.
As foreigners rush into Myanmar with briefcases stuffed with plans and cash for hotels, shopping malls and high rises, they discover the old ways die hard. Vincent Calvino's case is to find a young British-Thai man gone missing in Myanmar, while his best friend and protector Colonel Pratt of the Royal Thai Police has an order to cut off the supply of cold pills from Myanmar used for the methamphetamine trade in Thailand. As one of the most noir novels in the Vincent Calvino series, Missing in Rangoon plays out beneath the moving shadows of the cross-border drug barons. Pratt and Calvino's lives are entangled with the invisible forces inside the old regime and their allies who continue to play by their own set of rules.
Unknown Binding
First published November 28, 2012
7 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Christopher G. Moore
69 books65 followersChristopher G. Moore is a Canadian author who has lived in Thailand since 1988. Formerly a law professor at the University of British Columbia and a practicing lawyer, Moore has become a public figure in Southeast Asia, known for his novels and essays that have captured the spirit and social transformation of Southeast Asia over the past three decades.
Moore has written over 30 fiction and non-fiction books, including the Vincent Calvino novels which have won including the Shamus Award and German Critics Award and have been translated to over a dozen languages. Moore’s books and essays are a study of human nature, culture, power, justice, technological change and its implications on society and human rights.
Starting in 2017, the London-based Christopher G. Moore Foundation awards an annual literary prize to books advancing awareness on human rights. He’s also the founder of Changing Climate, Changing Lives Film Festival 2020.
Moore has written over 30 fiction and non-fiction books, including the Vincent Calvino novels which have won including the Shamus Award and German Critics Award and have been translated to over a dozen languages. Moore’s books and essays are a study of human nature, culture, power, justice, technological change and its implications on society and human rights.
Starting in 2017, the London-based Christopher G. Moore Foundation awards an annual literary prize to books advancing awareness on human rights. He’s also the founder of Changing Climate, Changing Lives Film Festival 2020.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 23, 2013
Missing in Rangoon is not only Christopher G. Moore’s most accessible and finest novel, but a coherent continuation of all the books the Canadian born Bangkok based author has written and published in over a quarter of a century of prolific literary accomplishments during his time as an author in South East Asia.
One can get lost in the language of the early land of Smiles trilogy (A Killing, Bewitching, and Haunting Smile), and reread passages with renewed enjoyment each time. The early Bangkok Land of Smile novels were experimental in their use of POV switches, cutting in of newspaper and magazine articles, seamless dialogue, and dreamlike narrative voice, chapters verging onto stream of consciousness voice. The reader could eat the language and recognize the wide, vibrant, colorful cast. Three books of their time and place. Christopher G. Moore, as a novelist has moved on to a more commercial and in my opinion better place.
The publication of Spirit House first in the Vincent Calvino crime series marked a sea change. Moore gets a firm grip on plot, action, and narrows the cast down to a net of familiars and necessary extras. With Vincent Calvino, the writing becomes tighter, more organized.
Never an author to create fully formed antagonists, and perhaps true to the noir genre, the cities themselves breathe fear and anxiety, mystery and suspense onto the pages.
The big pull with Moore’s work is the descriptions of the exotic places he knows too well. Descriptive passages were I feel detailed rather heavily in some earlier works. I live and walk the same streets as Calvino does. One way of looking at a brilliant piece of fiction is that if one single paragraph be taken away from the work then the whole story crumbles to dust without making sense. Writing fiction is about taking away what is not required. One must Chip chip chip away at a rock to uncover a statue. Missing in Rangoon achieves this.
The balance of dialogue, description, and action is perfect.
The story?
Calvino – half-Jewish-half-Italian private eye and his jazz saxophonist police connection take a trip to the recently opened Burma on a twofold case. One to find the whereabouts of a Bangkok bar-owner’s wayward bass guitar bothering son, and two to intercept the smuggling of over the counter cold pills smuggled across the border from Rangoon into Bangkok for the production of methamphetamines. They encounter an interesting cast of characters including a fine noir vixen, a fortune-telling private dick, the mob, and the usual cast of ways and strays flung to any South East Asian city. I recommend reading Missing in Rangoon, even if you have not read Christopher G. Moore’s novels before and especially if you have.
His best yet.
One can get lost in the language of the early land of Smiles trilogy (A Killing, Bewitching, and Haunting Smile), and reread passages with renewed enjoyment each time. The early Bangkok Land of Smile novels were experimental in their use of POV switches, cutting in of newspaper and magazine articles, seamless dialogue, and dreamlike narrative voice, chapters verging onto stream of consciousness voice. The reader could eat the language and recognize the wide, vibrant, colorful cast. Three books of their time and place. Christopher G. Moore, as a novelist has moved on to a more commercial and in my opinion better place.
The publication of Spirit House first in the Vincent Calvino crime series marked a sea change. Moore gets a firm grip on plot, action, and narrows the cast down to a net of familiars and necessary extras. With Vincent Calvino, the writing becomes tighter, more organized.
Never an author to create fully formed antagonists, and perhaps true to the noir genre, the cities themselves breathe fear and anxiety, mystery and suspense onto the pages.
The big pull with Moore’s work is the descriptions of the exotic places he knows too well. Descriptive passages were I feel detailed rather heavily in some earlier works. I live and walk the same streets as Calvino does. One way of looking at a brilliant piece of fiction is that if one single paragraph be taken away from the work then the whole story crumbles to dust without making sense. Writing fiction is about taking away what is not required. One must Chip chip chip away at a rock to uncover a statue. Missing in Rangoon achieves this.
The balance of dialogue, description, and action is perfect.
The story?
Calvino – half-Jewish-half-Italian private eye and his jazz saxophonist police connection take a trip to the recently opened Burma on a twofold case. One to find the whereabouts of a Bangkok bar-owner’s wayward bass guitar bothering son, and two to intercept the smuggling of over the counter cold pills smuggled across the border from Rangoon into Bangkok for the production of methamphetamines. They encounter an interesting cast of characters including a fine noir vixen, a fortune-telling private dick, the mob, and the usual cast of ways and strays flung to any South East Asian city. I recommend reading Missing in Rangoon, even if you have not read Christopher G. Moore’s novels before and especially if you have.
His best yet.
February 24, 2014
Could have been so good but failed for me on multiple levels. A private eye going to Rangoon to find a missing person as that country is transformed by an influx of speculators has some promise. Which is squandered by the fact that every character tries to speak like a chandler hero, the writer takes a unique place like Rangoon and completely fails to do it justice, and the too cute for school stock characters clash horribly with the noir pretensions. This soufflé would not rise leaving a soggy mess.
October 29, 2019
A long, somewhat dry book with a mildly interesting story. Many interesting descriptions of Myanmar and Thailand but boringly wordy in many places and often when examples of something are given (e.g. foods in a restaurant) instead of two or three examples, 10 - 12 are given causing the reader to skip ahead.
June 28, 2019
A bit of a change to get a look at Burma/Myanmar as it begins to open. I sensed a channeling of the Raymond Chandler style of writing here that I may have missed in previous books .
May 3, 2022
Decent exotic noir. The author has great knowledge of the region and human nature which adds texture and depth to this detective novel.
July 22, 2024
Maybe it's Myanmar/Burma. I don't like the place, and I find novels set there mostly depressing and languishing about. That's how I feel about this Calvino novel. It's choppy, disjointed, and, ultimately, about trivial drug running. Calvino goes to a hotel, moves to a house, attends a trial, surveils a market, spends time in bookshop, and ends up at a birthday party in an old colonial mansion. Rangoon is boring. Moore has done better when he moves Calvino out of Bangkok. Comfort Zone had an interesting interlude in Saigon. And Zero Hour in Phnom Penh made the Cambodian capital a place of intrigue, violence, and deadly secrets. But Rangoon just sits there in Missing. One other thing, Calvino should be pushing sixty in this novel, judging by his age when the series began. So here we have a sixty year old man, out of shape, alcoholic, paunchy, and sweaty. I really didn't want to hear the hardcore details of his love life.
July 17, 2013
"Mirrors Clouded with Smoke and Dreams..." 7. Dezember 2012
Von miki101. Michaela
Format:Kindle Edition
...The best description I ever read about Myanmar, the former British Crown Colony, commonly known as Burma.
The land where Vincent Calvino, our well-known Ex-New-Yorker, Ex-lawyer who re-invented himself into a Bangkok Private Eye, is searching for someone who's gone Missing In Rangoon and will find, among many others ... George Orwell.
In this 13th book of the series more than in each and everyone of his former adventures, Vinnie Calvino has to turn himself into a Cultural Detective.
Because a task given by a father in search of his wayward son and only reluctantly accepted, turnes out to be much more profound and intricated our hero could never have imagined.
Squeezed almost against his will into the role of escort and chaperone of his old Police Colonel friend Pratt going for a Sax gig to Rangoon, he thought it would be easy to find the missing Rob in the Music scene there. Because Rob followed Mya - la Chatte Noire - a woman with a head, a voice and an agenda all of her own...
But Pratt himself is artfully double-dealing, playing not only the Saxophone but trying at the same time to stop the cold-pill smuggling scheme from Burma to Thailand.
So poor Vinnie has to sacrifice his ageing body not only to one hilarious 10K indurance run, but also to an other, much more intimate approach to find some "co-worker" spying for him! A pure James-Bond situation - only that it will backfire and force our failed "secret agent man" into the underbelly of Rangoon...
OK - Vincent Calvino will find who he was looking for, but also much more that he had asked for. The situation gets always more heated until corpses begin to pile up. And our hero isn't able to cope with this strange country and it's people, their beliefs and dreams - and worst nightmares.
So some things will come out right, others wrong, some people will live, others die and in the very end it will be the Old Burma that takes its toll...
This book has overthrown Paying Back Jack: A Vincent Calvino Novel (Vincent Calvino Series) as my favorite Calvino novel. As a reader of Christopher G. Moore's books for more than 20 years now, owning all he ever published, I thought nothing he will write could catch me off-guard like this one. Every new book was well-researched, masterly written, extremely well plotted.
But with this book he shows a totally new side of Vincent Calvino, even to his long-time readers: The vulnerable side, not-having-an-answer-to-every-question side, the fish-out-of-the-water side, making miscalculations even about his best friend, and committing deadly errors.
And the most surprising question of him in the whole book was "Did George Orwell write about Elephants?"
And so I can give only a little advice to Vincent Calvino, Bangkok-based P.I.: Read more books about the countries around Your little self like Cambodia, Burma, Laos and start with an other Chris G. Moore novel about the older Burma Waiting for the Lady, and then follow up with [ASIN:B00A8J0W38 The Orwell Brigade]] - a book which gives deep insights about one of the most important writers of the last century, then follow up with Phnom Penh Noir - which will show, that not only Myanmar with its "Opening-Up" for the rest of the world has its difficulties...
Von miki101. Michaela
Format:Kindle Edition
...The best description I ever read about Myanmar, the former British Crown Colony, commonly known as Burma.
The land where Vincent Calvino, our well-known Ex-New-Yorker, Ex-lawyer who re-invented himself into a Bangkok Private Eye, is searching for someone who's gone Missing In Rangoon and will find, among many others ... George Orwell.
In this 13th book of the series more than in each and everyone of his former adventures, Vinnie Calvino has to turn himself into a Cultural Detective.
Because a task given by a father in search of his wayward son and only reluctantly accepted, turnes out to be much more profound and intricated our hero could never have imagined.
Squeezed almost against his will into the role of escort and chaperone of his old Police Colonel friend Pratt going for a Sax gig to Rangoon, he thought it would be easy to find the missing Rob in the Music scene there. Because Rob followed Mya - la Chatte Noire - a woman with a head, a voice and an agenda all of her own...
But Pratt himself is artfully double-dealing, playing not only the Saxophone but trying at the same time to stop the cold-pill smuggling scheme from Burma to Thailand.
So poor Vinnie has to sacrifice his ageing body not only to one hilarious 10K indurance run, but also to an other, much more intimate approach to find some "co-worker" spying for him! A pure James-Bond situation - only that it will backfire and force our failed "secret agent man" into the underbelly of Rangoon...
OK - Vincent Calvino will find who he was looking for, but also much more that he had asked for. The situation gets always more heated until corpses begin to pile up. And our hero isn't able to cope with this strange country and it's people, their beliefs and dreams - and worst nightmares.
So some things will come out right, others wrong, some people will live, others die and in the very end it will be the Old Burma that takes its toll...
This book has overthrown Paying Back Jack: A Vincent Calvino Novel (Vincent Calvino Series) as my favorite Calvino novel. As a reader of Christopher G. Moore's books for more than 20 years now, owning all he ever published, I thought nothing he will write could catch me off-guard like this one. Every new book was well-researched, masterly written, extremely well plotted.
But with this book he shows a totally new side of Vincent Calvino, even to his long-time readers: The vulnerable side, not-having-an-answer-to-every-question side, the fish-out-of-the-water side, making miscalculations even about his best friend, and committing deadly errors.
And the most surprising question of him in the whole book was "Did George Orwell write about Elephants?"
And so I can give only a little advice to Vincent Calvino, Bangkok-based P.I.: Read more books about the countries around Your little self like Cambodia, Burma, Laos and start with an other Chris G. Moore novel about the older Burma Waiting for the Lady, and then follow up with [ASIN:B00A8J0W38 The Orwell Brigade]] - a book which gives deep insights about one of the most important writers of the last century, then follow up with Phnom Penh Noir - which will show, that not only Myanmar with its "Opening-Up" for the rest of the world has its difficulties...
July 12, 2013
For well over 20 years Canadian lawyer turned crime writer Christopher G Moore has chronicled change in Thailand and the surrounding region through the character of Bangkok-based American private investigator, Vincent Calvino. Moore has penned 13 Calvino books. Most of them are set in Thailand, although the author has also taken his character to Vietnam and Cambodia. In the latest instalment, Missing in Rangoon, Calvino heads to Burma or, as it is now officially known, Myanmar.
The opening pages find Calvino standing in the shell of the Lonesome Hawk Bar, one of the establishments that used to form part of Washington Square. It was a well known and down at heel part of expat Bangkok, recently demolished to make way for yet another block of the condominiums that mark the city’s skyline. Calvino suggests to the former owner that he should consider starting over in Rangoon, a city on the make and welcoming all comers, much like Bangkok was decades ago.
Not that Calvino particularly wants to make the journey himself. He’s being pressured to travel to Burma by a disagreeable English brothel owner, who wants to hire him to find his son. The son has disappeared in the country’s capital along with his Burmese girlfriend, a real head turner and the lead singer in the band the son plays in.
There’s never any doubt Calvino will take the case, especially when his long time off-sider Pratt, a colonel in the Thai police and an honest cop, announces he is travelling to Rangoon. A keen jazz enthusiast, Pratt has been invited to the Burmese capital to play his beloved saxophone at an upmarket club. Off the books, he’s also been asked by his police superiors to help cut off the supply of cold pills from Burma, which are used to make methamphetamine, then trafficked to Thailand.
Rangoon now is a lot like what Phnom Penh was like in the 90s, a heady mixture of breakneck economic and social change, gangster capitalism and political rumour and intimidation. Soon Pratt and Calvino are enmeshed in its brutal Darwinian underworld and shadowed by Burmese military intelligence.
I read the first few Calvino books when I was living and working in the Mekong region in the 90s, but stopped getting them after I left. I haven’t picked up another one until Missing In Rangoon arrived.
Moore has lost none of his ability to convey a sense of menace and intrigue. His descriptions of Rangoon are excellent. In particular, he excels at describing the human and social fall-out that occurs when a poor, isolated country suddenly opens its borders to the world. There are flashes of humour too, particularly concerning Calvino’s interactions with Burma’s self declared first PI and astrologer.
Missing in Rangoon is a satisfying read, a mixture of hard-boiled crime fiction and acute social observation set in a little known part of Asia. What’s not to like?
The opening pages find Calvino standing in the shell of the Lonesome Hawk Bar, one of the establishments that used to form part of Washington Square. It was a well known and down at heel part of expat Bangkok, recently demolished to make way for yet another block of the condominiums that mark the city’s skyline. Calvino suggests to the former owner that he should consider starting over in Rangoon, a city on the make and welcoming all comers, much like Bangkok was decades ago.
Not that Calvino particularly wants to make the journey himself. He’s being pressured to travel to Burma by a disagreeable English brothel owner, who wants to hire him to find his son. The son has disappeared in the country’s capital along with his Burmese girlfriend, a real head turner and the lead singer in the band the son plays in.
There’s never any doubt Calvino will take the case, especially when his long time off-sider Pratt, a colonel in the Thai police and an honest cop, announces he is travelling to Rangoon. A keen jazz enthusiast, Pratt has been invited to the Burmese capital to play his beloved saxophone at an upmarket club. Off the books, he’s also been asked by his police superiors to help cut off the supply of cold pills from Burma, which are used to make methamphetamine, then trafficked to Thailand.
Rangoon now is a lot like what Phnom Penh was like in the 90s, a heady mixture of breakneck economic and social change, gangster capitalism and political rumour and intimidation. Soon Pratt and Calvino are enmeshed in its brutal Darwinian underworld and shadowed by Burmese military intelligence.
I read the first few Calvino books when I was living and working in the Mekong region in the 90s, but stopped getting them after I left. I haven’t picked up another one until Missing In Rangoon arrived.
Moore has lost none of his ability to convey a sense of menace and intrigue. His descriptions of Rangoon are excellent. In particular, he excels at describing the human and social fall-out that occurs when a poor, isolated country suddenly opens its borders to the world. There are flashes of humour too, particularly concerning Calvino’s interactions with Burma’s self declared first PI and astrologer.
Missing in Rangoon is a satisfying read, a mixture of hard-boiled crime fiction and acute social observation set in a little known part of Asia. What’s not to like?
April 6, 2013
Missing in Rangoon is the thirteenth outing for Moore’s New York born and Thai-based PI, Vincent Calvino and the first in the series I’ve read. I had no problems dropping into the series and the book works fine as a standalone. The strength of the story is the nicely realised sense of place and the social, political and historical contextualisation with respect Thai and Burmese culture, especially the latter as it slowly opens up after years as a closed state, as understood by a well-embedded farang (foreigner), and there are some nice observational touches throughout. The characterisation of Calvino and his Thai cop buddy, Colonel Pratt, are nicely done, though some of the other characters are little more than caricatures acting out cliched roles. The plot was engaging and for the most part worked well, though there were a couple of moments that felt a little clunky, and at times there is too much show rather than tell, some of which was redundant with points laboured and repeated. Overall, despite a couple of quibbles, an entertaining and enjoyable sojourn into the complex terrain of Rangoon.
June 16, 2013
I'm in need of a novel after so many non-fiction books. Am diving into this one right now! Enjoyed reading about the Rangoon (Yangon) that tourists normally never see and have no idea exists. the book is fast-paced with realistic dialogue. I could picture the setting because of two recent trips to Burma. I did have a slight problem keeping up with all of the names of lesser characters. Wondering if I'll see any of this Rangoon underbelly as I walk the streets and markets next visit. It's right there in plain sight.
July 13, 2014
Vincent Calvano. New York City detective. Been a private eye in Bangkok for years.
Friend of saxophone playing Colonel Pratt of the Bangkok police.
Both in Rangoon on business.
Lots of blood, corruption, drugs.
Terrific sense of being there.
Friend of saxophone playing Colonel Pratt of the Bangkok police.
Both in Rangoon on business.
Lots of blood, corruption, drugs.
Terrific sense of being there.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews