The Mean Streets of Asia Crime Novels

“Jake Needham is Asia’s Dashiell Hammett. His plotting is top-notch, and his writing is exquisitely fine. Highly, highly recommended.” (Brendan DuBois, New York Times best-selling author with James Patterson of The First Lady)

"The Ambassador’s Wife is another terrific book from a terrific writer. In the genre of crime fiction set in Asia, Jake Needham is in a class of his own.” (The Bangkok Post)

The first body is in Singapore, on a bed in an empty suite at the Marriott Hotel. The second is in Bangkok, in a seedy apartment near the American embassy. Both American women, both viciously beaten and shot in the head. Both stripped naked and lewdly displayed. 

The FBI says it’s terrorism, but the whispers on the street tell a different story. They say a serial killer is stalking American women in Asia. 

Singapore CID assigns the case to Inspector Samuel Tay. Tay is something of a reluctant policeman. He’s a little overweight, a little lonely, a little cranky, and he smokes way too much. Thinking back, he can’t even remember why he became a police detective in the first place. But maybe none of that really matters, because he’s very, very good at what he does.

So why is it, Tay soon begins to wonder, that nobody seems to want him to find the women's killer? Not the American ambassador, not the FBI, not even his bosses at CID. 

When international politics takes over a murder case, the truth is the next victim.