Young Rafferty, once a rootless travel-writer, has drifted into an expatriate life in Bangkok, Thailand. To his surprise and cautious happiness, life is good. He feels at home in Thailand. He is coming to understand the subtle and complex Thai culture. The Thais themselves regard him with curiosity and sometimes discreet approval since he looks Asian thanks to his mother’s Filipina heritage.

He loves Rose, a Thai woman who fiercely guards her independence. Half the time, she stays at his place – though she insists on keeping her own crummy apartment. He hopes to persuade her to marry him. (At present, however, her energies are consumed with launching a house-cleaning business that will enable many of her old co-workers to quit their jobs as strippers in the tourist bars.) Rafferty and Rose even have a daughter in 8 year-old Miaow, a former street kid with a harrowing past whom they hope to adopt.

A Nail Through the Heart opens ominously after the 2004 tsunami that devastated Phuket. On a mysterious estate in Bangkok late at night, a Thai safe-cracker and his Cambodian employer dig up a buried lockbox that contains gruesome photographs. The Thai man is too curious, and the Cambodian seizes the photos and kills him.

Meanwhile, Miaow runs across another street kid who used to protect her; now, she wants to return the favor, and insists that Rafferty take in her friend. Unfortunately, the new kid is a scrawny, crazed boy who calls himself Superman. Superman is filthy and filled with distrust. He also has a history of violence and drug abuse. Even the cops and social workers warn Rafferty about letting Superman into his life.

Rafferty wants to heed their warnings because he will have to jump many hurdles to prove himself to the proper authorities as a stable family man so that he can adopt Miaow. But he also cannot deny Miaow, who never asks him for anything, her need to save her friend.

Life is about to get even more complicated. An acquaintance refers an Australian woman to him: she wants to find her missing uncle, and has heard that Rafferty knows his way around Bangkok better than most expatriates. Out of pity, Rafferty agrees to help. But the more he finds out about her uncle, the more the missing man starts to look like an especially monstrous pedophile. Meanwhile, a rich and elderly Thai woman wants to hire Rafferty to find a Cambodian man who stole something from her estate.

This sends a chill through us readers because we remember the opening chapter when the Cambodian man unearthed the gruesome photographs on this woman’s estate. The photos showed this woman engaged in some atrocity. Clearly the Cambodian man wants to blackmail her, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person since we also saw the woman in a later chapter torturing her house-guard who was found to have collaborated with the Cambodian.

Poor Rafferty doesn’t know any of this, however, though his instincts warn him against the creepy Thai dowager. He just knows he needs the money. He agrees to help her. Now he has his hands full with Superman, the missing uncle, and the mysterious Cambodian. Little does he know that he will soon be risking his own life and lives of those whom he holds dear.

A Nail through the Heart is a haunting read. The author goes deeper than the usual thriller in giving you a sense of Bangkok: he describes the Thai people with empathy and wistful admiration. His street scenes bristle with sensory realism: you hear the clamor of different languages, and feel the sticky press of the crowds under the steamy sun. Rafferty is a good character: cautious, hopeful, and often justifiably frightened. Hallinan is an author to watch, and A Nail through the Heart is available on Amazon through this link: A Nail Through the Heart