{"id":8438,"date":"2020-03-09T07:38:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T11:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8438"},"modified":"2020-03-09T07:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T11:41:00","slug":"passport-to-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8438","title":{"rendered":"****Passport to Death"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Yigal Zur, translated from Hebrew by Sara Kitai.<\/a> This thriller, recently translated into English, features former Israeli security operative Dotan Naor, whose firm has something of a specialty of rescuing Israelis who find themselves in tricky situations abroad. In his new case, a pretty young woman named Sigal Bardon, age 26, has gone missing in Bangkok, and her family wants her back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naor is a cynical narrator, intimately familiar with that\nsoutheast Asian city, having spent time there off and on for two decades. If he\nhad to guess, he would chalk Sigal\u2019s disappearance up to a drug overdose\u2014heroin,\nBangkok gold. There are a lot of bad ways that story can end, and he knows most\nof them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once in Bangkok, Naor takes a room in the heart of Patpong,\na nexus of unsavory activity, and a district where information about Sigal, or\nthe woman herself, is likely to be found, traded, or bought. On a sweltering\nday he takes a ride in an air-conditioned cab. The driver offers the usual drugs\nand girls, and he also has passports belonging to Sigal Bardon and someone\nnamed Micha Waxman. Naor buys both, plus the information that the driver drove\nthem to the train station. This encounter is too much of a coincidence, and Naor\nwonders who\u2019s trailing him, who recruited this driver, who\u2019s anticipating his\nmission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The complicated plot involving a diverse cast of Israeli\nexpats, drug kingpins, and Thai Tourist Police moves along briskly. Sigal\nherself remains something of a cipher, but the colorful supporting\ncharacters\u2014monks, fortune tellers, whore mistresses, and Naor\u2019s old Shin Bet acquaintances,\ntroublesome though they may be\u2014are vivid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout\nthe story, Naor hears echoes of his past and the scandal that ended his special\nforces career. Old companions lurk in Bangkok\u2019s dark corners, but are they\nallies or adversaries? He takes the pessimistic view: \u201cThe past surged up and\nflooded over me like a sewer that had overflowed.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every clue that Naor tracks down solidifies his initial\nimpression that drug dealing is at the center of Sigal\u2019s disappearance. But is\nshe still alive? Her sister thinks so, but says little. The drug lords she\ndoublecrossed think so and want her themselves. Waxman thought so, but he\u2019s\ndead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zur\u2019s rich descriptions of Bangkok permeate every scene and\nengage all the senses. This isn\u2019t a story that could take place anywhere else,\nand by the time you turn the last page, you may feel like you\u2019ve been there.\nAnd you\u2019ll be glad to have made the trip from the comfort of your reading chair,\nout of danger and chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zur\u2019s previous thriller Death in Shangri-La<\/a> was also fun! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: cegoh for Pixabay <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Yigal Zur, translated from Hebrew by Sara Kitai. This thriller, recently translated into English, features former Israeli security operative Dotan Naor, whose firm has something of a specialty of rescuing Israelis who find themselves in tricky situations abroad. In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Passport to Death - Want an exotic vacation without the coronavirus? Not to mention the pimps and pushers and police with dubious methods? From your favorite chair you can travel to steamy Bangkok with the help of Yigal Zur\u2019s entertaining new thriller.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[440,52,54,40,126],"tags":[1717,1718,1495],"class_list":["post-8438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","category-crime","category-detective","category-fiction","category-reading-2","tag-bangkok","tag-passport-to-death","tag-yigal-zur"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/Bangkok-boat-market.jpg?fit=480%2C640&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2c6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8441,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8438\/revisions\/8441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}