Collin Piprell

Kicking Dogs Collin Piprell

Kicking Dogs is a comic thriller. It's also an antic portrait of boom-time Bangkok. Bangkok is being transfigured by unrestrained development and corrupted by rampant greed. Meanwhile Jack Shackaway, American freelance journalist and author of such literary masterpieces as *A Dick for Dorothy*, is succumbing to a bad case of culture shock-no matter he himself believes he's adjusting nicely to the Thai Way, learning among other things how to maintain his cool under all circumstances. But every time he turns around, someone is either telling him he's a babe in the woods, extracting money from him, or shooting at him. Jack has no idea who is trying to kill him. But, given his talent for annoying the wrong people, it could be just about anybody. Not only that, if he isn't careful he's going to wind up married to Mu, which might be better than being dead, but not necessarily a lot better. "Easily labelled a comic thriller, and taking Bangkok's underworld for its setting, Kicking Dogs is something deeper, wider-ranging ... and, ultimately, transcending physical place in its theme of coming to terms with cultural alienation." John Hoskin, *Outlook* "The market being sated with farang-written books about Thai prostitutes, it was a pleasant surprise to read Collin Piprell's Kicking Dogs." Bernard Trink, *Bangkok Post*