Introduction for Christopher G. Moore from Bangkok Noir Night of Fiction

(.......the introduction I gave for Bangkok Noir author Christopher G. Moore at the Bangkok Noir Night of Fiction Event April 17th at the Check Inn 99 in Bangkok................)

Two Christopher G. Moore books with Chris Coles paintings as cover art....

Most of you are probably familiar with the various novels and essays of Christopher G. Moore, especially his series of Private Eye novels featuring the Bangkok Expat detective, Vincent Calvino.

Christopher was one of the first fiction writers to undertake a substantial and sustained effort to make use of the settings and characters of modern Bangkok to create not one, but a series of stories that portrayed the life and times, the neighborhoods and streets, the gestalt and weirdness of this vast and energetic metropolis we call Bangkok.

"Portrait of Bangkok Noir Author Christopher G. Moore" - Chris Coles

His work has paved the way for others, writers, film-makers, musicians and artists, to realize that the vast setting of the Bangkok Night has way more potential than simply five minutes of condom sex between two or more strangers in a short-time hotel.

That the Bangkok Night could be transformed into not only many individual stories, books, films, songs and paintings about the actual Bangkok Night and its actual people, but that there were also more universal themes to be explored, portrayed and revealed.

Among them as present in Christopher's work, the ongoing 1st world/3rd world collisions between people and cultures in a time of rapid globalization and wide-body jets, the internet, ATM machines and Smart phones. 

The confused, ambiguous and rapidly changing state of male/female relations in our present time, created, in part at least, by radically more equal access to education, professions and money. 

The changing role of religion, superstition and beliefs in people's perceptions and how they act.

The immense pressure and dislocation caused by rapid economic development and the consequent dis-integration of traditional social structures.

And so on....

I, for one, am grateful for Chris' dedication and efforts, both past and ongoing.

It's my pleasure to introduce Christopher G. Moore.

Bangkok Noir News

Ralf Tooten, the award winning photographer, and the writer, Roger Willemsen, have published a book of photographs and commentary about the Bangkok Night Scene titled BANGKOK NOIR.

Will they capture that Bangkok Noir mood? Locked somewhere between menace and mystery, gangsters and angels, where the cigarette smoke is stale, the beer flat and a distant tenor sax plays in the shadows.

For more about Ralf Tooten and his photographs, go to:
http://www.tooten.com/main.html