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The Man With The Golden Mind (Detective Maier Mysteries) Paperback – August 21, 2021
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Detective Maier has a new case. This time it is a cold case: investigating the death of Julia Rendel's father, an East German culture attaché who was killed near a fabled CIA airbase in central Laos in 1976.
But before the detective can set off, his client is kidnapped right out of his arms. Maier follows Julia's trail to the Laotian capital Vientiane, where he learns different parties, including his missing client, are searching for a legendary CIA file crammed with Cold War secrets.
The real prize, however, is the file's author: someone codenamed Weltmeister, a former US and Vietnamese spy and assassin no one has seen for a quarter century. Racing against time, Maier needs to dig deep into the past - including his own - in order to make sense of the present.
The second book in Tom Vater's Detective Maier Mysteries series, The Man With The Golden Mind is an action-packed thriller with plenty of sex, drugs, assassinations and double-crosses.
This book contains graphic violence and is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.
- Print length296 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateAugust 21, 2021
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.74 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-13979-8461474614
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Product details
- ASIN : B09CRQDFPS
- Publisher : Independently published (August 21, 2021)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 296 pages
- ISBN-13 : 979-8461474614
- Item Weight : 15.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.74 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,511,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,841 in Assassination Thrillers (Books)
- #8,819 in Kidnapping Thrillers
- #15,840 in Historical Thrillers (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Tom Vater is a writer and editor working predominantly in Asia.
He has published four novels, The Devil's Road to Kathmandu, currently available in English and Spanish, and the Detective Maier trilogy which includes The Cambodian Book of the Dead (2012), its follow-up The Man with the Golden Mind (2013), and finally The Monsoon Ghost Image (2018).
His articles on Asian politics, tourism, the environment, minorities, pop and youth culture have been published in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Times, The Guardian, The Mekong Review, Marie Claire, and Geographical.
He is correspondent for Germany's largest independent travel publisher Reise-Know-How in Thailand as well as The Daily Telegraph's Thailand destination expert, and a frequent contributor to the Nikkei Asian Review.
He has published several non-fiction books, including the highly acclaimed and bestselling Sacred Skin (with his former wife, photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat), the more recent Burmese Light with photographer Hans Kemp and Cambodia: Journey through the Lad of the Khmer with photographer Kraig Lieb, the best selling illustrated book in Cambodia in 2018/2019.
Tom is the co-author of several documentary screenplays, most notably The Most Secret Place on Earth, a feature on the CIA's covert war in 1960s Laos.
In his spare time, Tom travels and plays RocknRoll.
www.clippings.me/tomvater
www.tomvater.com
https://th.linkedin.com/pub/tom-vater/38/520/ba0
www.crimewavepress
www.sandscribes.com
Customer reviews
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2014I stayed up much too late last night, motionless on my sofa, racing my way through The Man with the Golden Mind. This morning I feel a bit groggy, still caught in Laos with one of the most attractive characters in crime fiction, Maier.
First introduced in The Cambodian Book of the Dead, Maier is a German journalist turned private detective, a man who knows Southeast Asia well. In his mid-forties, he’s “tired but not finished,” with a hard-earned reputation as an “Asia expert,” and a man who allows little to escape his green-eyed stare. Hired by beautiful Julia Rendell to discover who killed her father in rural Laos twenty-five years earlier, Maier immediately finds the job will be far from easy when his client is kidnapped soon after she retains him.
In Laos, he bumps up against past history and a dazzling panoply of international obstructions, from the well-preserved karaoke-singing Mr. Mookie, whose passion for bargirls covers a coldblooded interior, to the Teacher, a one-legged ex-CIA agent, crazed but still deadly, who heads the Free State of Mind in the middle of the Laos jungle. Then there’s Kanitha, who says she’s a journalist but has the mind and heart of a true killer.
As he travels through northern Laos, searching for his client and the answers she has hired him to uncover, Maier discovers strange links to a mystery of his own, as well as unexploded ordnance and hints of a lost file from the days of the American War—one that could blow the lid off modern-day alliances. When a former associate, “a gay Russian hit man,” suddenly shows up in the mix, Maier is drawn deep into a morass of nation against nation, where individual lives are valueless.
Tom Vater is a master of plot and character, which puts The Man with the Golden Mind at the top of my list of memorable crime fiction. But what keeps me reading everything this man writes is his stunning sense of place. Bangkok, he says, is “a metropolis of ten million people who never talked to each other but smiled and smiled and smiled.” The mercilessly-bombed Plain of Jars is “a giant’s golf course” and a crisp description of “the last frontier for the Lonely Planet set” is precise, satirical, and right on target. And then there’s Maier, a man who uses only his surname—and when Vater finally explains why, readers can only sympathize.
Addiction is a pitiable state to live in. I know I face a long, miserable withdrawal period before I spend another night with one of Tom Vater’s books, gulping down the chapters and savoring the journey that this writer always provides. Kathmandu, Cambodia, Laos…I can’t wait to see where we go next…
- Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2022THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN MIND (Detective Maier Mystery Book #2) by Tom Vater is the second noir crime fiction/spy thriller which takes the reader on an intriguing, atmospheric and thrilling trip into Asia with German war correspondent turned private investigator Maier. While his last adventure took him back to Cambodia, this time he is sent to investigate a twenty-five-year-old case in Laos.
Julia Rendel hires Maier to investigate what happened to her East German cultural attaché father who was murdered twenty-five-years-ago in Long Cheng, a CIA run airbase in Laos during the Vietnamese war. Before the two can even begin their journey to Laos, Julia is kidnapped right from under Maier in their hotel room.
Maier arrives in Laos and is immediately dragged along by circumstances rather than following a step-by-step investigation. Maier learns his information is far from complete and he ends up searching not only for his missing client and answers from the past, but also a cache of gold, a legendary CIA file and a spy who does not wish to come in from the cold.
I found the intriguing and unique characters, the vividly drawn atmosphere and locations and the surprising twists and action kept me turning the pages. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, but eventually they sort themselves out and the plot moves along at a fast pace. I was surprised by the return of a character from the first book and with his return comes a very unexpected plot twist. The author steeped me in the atmosphere and culture of Loas, past and present which made it a unique read. While this is not an easy book to read, the characters, location and plot all come together to make it a very special noir crime fiction/spy thriller book to read.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2021This is a page burner and a great read. Having been in the Air Force during the beginning of the Vietnam war, I was smart enough to not reenlist since I would have been sent to Ben Wha AFB as a crew chief on TF 102's sent as ground support aircraft. Later on I worked on the first laser guided missiles used to stop the flow of weapons coming down the Ho Che Man trail so was involved in the war!
- Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2015Like the authors style, the main charactors and find the location and history very interesting.
Top reviews from other countries
- Rodney SimpsonReviewed in Canada on August 7, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars The twist and turns of the Secret War.
The twist and turns of the Secret War form the background, but the characters are brilliant and very believable. It shows craft to be able to right something this good with not one character that you can like. It comes down to a game of who’s the worst and more interesting which side are they on anyway. We find out that nobody wins and the only side that counts is human greed and perfidy. After reading this one, I immediately bought the other two.
- SheepishReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars Very enjoyable read
A good read. Set against a very recognisable Laos the plot is an original twist on the SE Asia thriller genre. The author has a great sense of place. Maier is a well drawn character. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, the story cracks along and I look forward to the next in the series.