BookView Review

A missing-person case becomes a descent into moral darkness in Nordgren’s haunting thriller. When down-on-his-luck journalist Shane Morris agrees to find a missing Thai-American woman, he’s pulled into Bangkok’s shadowy underworld, where every truth hides a lie. Ploy’s haunting videos insist she’s safe, but her fear says otherwise. As Shane tracks her through backstreet motels and glittering high-rises, he exposes a powerful man’s secret, and a reflection of his own moral collapse.

Nordgren’s writing is clear-eyed and precise, capturing a Thailand both luminous and broken. As Shane digs deeper, the investigation becomes less about rescue and more about facing his own moral collapse. Like the best noir, the novel is as much about the investigator as the crime. Shane’s cynicism and vulnerability make him a compelling lens through which to view a country alive with contradiction—where kindness coexists with exploitation, and loyalty can be as dangerous as betrayal. Ploy, Sumali, and Kittisak are drawn with equal care: the runaway searching for belonging, the mother consumed by regret, and the father whose success masks rot. At once a mystery and a meditation on loss, the novel balances tension with tenderness. By the end, the truth offers no victory—only a harsh and irreversible reckoning.

A dark, atmospheric thriller steeped in mystery, moral tension, and haunting beauty.

***