Bangkok Whispers

By: Stephen Shaiken

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Some people just can’t avoid danger. Lately, American expat lawyer Glenn Murray Cohen has been one of them. A year ago, Glenn and his close friends from Bangkok’s mysterious NJA Club were drawn into a CIA plot to kidnap a Russian gangster. They succeeded and survived, thinking life was back to normal. When a sleazy grifter from Glenn’s past appears in Bangkok, Glenn and the NJA gang are dragged back into a dangerous world, this one filled with North Korean drug dealers, spies, and hitmen. Follow Glenn and his colorful friends as they face bullets, deceit, and love. Suspense with a touch of humor will keep you turning the pages of this latest exotic noir thriller by a master of the genre.

A fun adventure in the backdrop of Bangkok

This is a fun adventure of an almost believable American farang (foreigner), living an almost believable experience, in the stretch of the imagination version of Bangkok. There's enough real references to Bangkok locations, Thai modern culture, current global climate to make the setting digestible for the suspension of disbelief throughout the entire story. Extra enticement points for those westerners who have visited Bangkok and have tasted the full spectrum of possibilities Bangkok has to offer.

There's enough movement, mystery, snarky attitudes, and rough around the edges characters to make the story interesting and a fun ride. Being set in Thailand/Bangkok plays a big part in the appeal of this book, so the reader will procure more enjoyment if they have an affinity for Thailand/Bangkok. I enjoyed the listen and would be interested in more works in this theme. The story itself follows Glenn, an American lawyer, falls into an adventure in Bangkok with shady characters, drug trafficking, the CIA and North Korea, while living through a fantasy that most western tourists will never experience.

The downside, is that this audio book is narrated by Virtual Voice. While amazing that AI could be used to create the audio narration, and does a fair job of injecting emotions and inflections to the reading, it does not get that last (but important) 10% that someone who understood the material would be able to narrate; and this detracts from the book. This, more than anything else, broke me out of the suspension of disbelief. For example, the AI would mispronounce "Thais" (ie the people of Thailand" as "thighs" (the upper leg) and didn't differentiate characters well, particularly in back and forth conversations.