Breathing Water

I finished reading Breathing Water by Timothy Hallinan this week. Some books I can breeze through - for various reasons. It might be an author I like or a protagonist I love to follow or a genre that’s light and doesn’t take concentration to keep up with, and so on. Breathing Water is labeled as “A Bangkok Thriller,” and therein lay the problem for me. Perhaps I should say “within me.” It wasn’t a problem with the writing. Hallinan is definitely a good writer and he clearly knows the ins and outs of Bangkok, both the landscape and the politics. He has an interesting way with words and will inspire you to pay attention to your own words when you write.

This paragraph from the inside cover will give you an inkling as to why I hesitated to read and why it took me a while to finish:

Set in the Thailand of today’s headlines -- a nation of unrest, political uncertainty, corruption, and tradition, where the future looks dangerously precarious -- Breathing Water is the story of a deadly game in which the stakes are enormous and life is literally cheap.

I read that and put down the book, thinking, I don’t want to go there. I picked it back up, though, and began to read. Unless you’ve been to Thailand or lived there (I haven’t), I dare say this will plunge you into a dark world with strange traditions and scary situations. It will also introduce you to survivors and heroes. And, until the end, you will be wondering who will live, who will die, and who will be lost to the streets and corruption.

If you like thrillers that take you to dark places and into situations that make your stomach hurt, give Breathing Water a try.
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FTC Disclaimer: If I remember right, Hallinan’s publicist sent Breathing Water to me. I definitely appreciate it, especially since it was autographed, but nothing was said about doing a review. I have got to start writing down who sends me books. Sometimes I know they’re coming. Sometimes they just show up in my mailbox. I open the mailbox, find a book, do my I-got-a-book!-dance, spend fifteen minutes explaining to the neighbors that, no, I’m not having spastic convulsions, take the package in the house, rip it open, hug the book, and read the inside cover. That’s pretty much my routine - or it used to be. Now, I wait until I’m almost back to the house and out of sight before I begin my gyrating dance. The next book I need is one on getting yourself out of a straightjacket.