Cambodia Noir: A Novel - Couverture rigide

Seeley, Nick

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1501106082 ISBN 13 : 9781501106088

Editeur : Scribner, 2016

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

“Cambodia Noir is not for the faint-hearted. Nick Seeley’s debut novel takes the reader into the Inner Circle of Hell: Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a city of drugs, death, and violence. Seeley’s characters are alive, until they’re not, and his plotting and pacing are as sharp and original as his writing.”—Nelson DeMille

“The more dissolute photojournalist Will Keller looks for a disappeared young intern, the more he needs to watch his back. Monsoon-fueled Phnom Penh rumbles with murderous cops, an impending military coup, machete assassinations, and swerving motorbike rides on pitch-black roads. Nick Seeley’s Cambodia Noir is a mangrove swamp of a thriller you won’t put down. A terrific read.”--Jason Matthews, New York Times bestselling author of Red Sparrow and Palace of Treason

"When you think there is nothing new on the mystery scene, a debut blasts into your orbit and excites all the feelings that reading a great novel once bestowed. Imagine a Graham Greene of the zeitgeist, sprinkled with the audacity of John Burdett, fuelled,with a narrative reminiscent of the early Deaver or indeed King in his prime, and then add the finesse, the art of James Sallis and you have Cambodia Noir. It is that good, heartbreaking and brutal, insightful and deeply informative, as if Paul Theroux suddenly wrote an Ellroy homage. It strikes chords of all the great novelists. Best of all, it re-establishes noir as not only a serious and imaginative genre, but manages to place it in a whole new dimension of exciting possibilities."--Ken Bruen, award-winning author of The Guards

"How do you sum up a book as layered as Cambodia Noir? It's a riveting sequence of meticulously choreographed psychological strip teases. It's an eat-you-up-suck-you-in page turner. Cambodia Noir is refreshingly rich with human emotion and unsolvable problems. Seeley is an imaginative storyteller with a journalist's eye for detail. You feel that in every page of this bubbling cauldron of a book."--Caroline Kepnes, author of You

“International journalist Seeley’s debut novel puts the traditional noir story on ’roids... The fast-moving narrative is like riding through Phnom Penh’s streets on the back of a motorcycle...delivers an up-close, jarring look at a city rocked with unrest and an atmospheric take on that enduring noir protagonist, the dissolute foreign correspondent. A sinuous, shattering thriller.”--Booklist STARRED review

"A superb debut from a talent to watch in the coming years. It's quite a tale, one that sweeps the reader into peril and passion, all unraveling at the perfect pace. A treat from start to finish."--Steve Berry, New York Times Bestselling author of The Patriot Threat and The Templar Legacy

If ever a case was made for place as character in a novel, Seeley makes it here with scene after nightmarish scene...This is distinctive work. The plotting is wily and entertaining, the take on Cambodia, trenchant and disturbing.”--Kirkus Reviews

“Seeley gets Phnom Penh in the same way that John Burdett gets Bangkok, with descriptions so vivid that even if Seeley never mentioned the city by name, anyone who had ever spent time there would recognize it immediately. The thriller unfolds at a breakneck pace, with a backdrop of unrest and upheaval, and characters that blur (or totally obliterate) the lines between good and bad. Seeley impresses on every count.”--BookPage "TOP MYSTERY PICK"

“A compelling story of depravity and redemption with echoes of Twin Peaks and the bleakest works of Jim Thompson.”--Publishers Weekly “On the Radar” Debut Fiction Pick

"Nick Seeley’s Cambodia Noir is a tense and compelling neo-noir. This striking debut makes it clear that Seeley is a fine storyteller and a master of narrative voice. Highly recommended for readers looking for edgy and artfully crafted suspense."--Mark Wisniewski, author of Watch Me Go

Extrait :

Cambodia Noir DIARY

June 28, 2003

Airports kill me.

I need to stop thinking about Paris, which is close to impossible at the best of times. But in the farthest wing of Frankfurt terminal, a couple of hours before dawn, as I’m waiting for a plane to carry me away to a city whose name I cannot properly pronounce . . . well, it’s a terrible place to be alone with one’s thoughts. The lights went dim sometime after two, taking the incessant chatter of Sky News with them, so I have no way of knowing quite what time it is. It feels like the heat’s gone, too, and I’m sitting wrapped like a bonbon in souvenir scarves, scribbling nonsense.

For the first hour or so I kept my eyes closed and tried to picture beautiful things: the quiet terraces of Machu Picchu at dawn, or the minarets of Istanbul from the window of a descending plane. But all I could see were the catacombs, with their walls of silent skulls and femurs. In the air-conditioned chill, I felt like I was still down there, rubbing elbows with six million Parisian dead. It was peaceful. No war or massacre filled these halls with bones: they were carted here at night to clear out the city’s teeming cemeteries. In one spot, where the remains didn’t quite reach the low ceiling, someone had installed electric lamps on a wire, so you could see how far back the charnel house went: row upon row upon row, under glowing bulbs that swept into the dark like the lights of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. . . .

That’s when I smelled it: that perfume, like copper and roses, saturating the air around me, and my eyes snapped open. There was no one there, of course: just an airport, scented with nothing but industrial-strength cleanser and heartbreaking loneliness.

I have to think about something else!

Write something. Anything . . . eeny-meeny-miney-moe . . .

Keeping this journal is supposed to . . . I don’t know, make me aware or mindful or something. These days I’m not certain that’s such a good idea. A lot of my life would be better off forgotten. Perhaps I can find a certain ink that will fade, slowly, into the cream of the paper, taking all my history with it. Or just a marker: I can be like the post office girls in the war, inking out indiscretions from soldiers’ mash notes and love letters. My diary will read like the NSA’s Greatest Hits: page after page of neat black lines.

I’ve written things here I’ve never said out loud, things I’ve barely dared to think. Surely I could put down why I had to leave Paris?

But you would just think I was being ridiculous. Someday you’ll read this, laughing, shaking your head at the silly girl you used to be. You’ll wrack your brain, totally unable to imagine where you were when you wrote it, or what you might have been thinking.

Isn’t that what I’m hoping for, really, as I fill these blank pages? They hold the promise of that day: when I will be long gone, and you will have forgotten what it’s like to be haunted.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Scribner
• Date d'édition: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1501106082
• ISBN 13: 9781501106088
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 352