The Case of the Two-Faced Killer is Mithran Somasundrum’s second book featuring British-born, Bangkok-based Vijay Mistry, the owner of a combined translation and detective agency.
In his detective endeavours, Vijay is aided by a team of obliging accomplices: an old university friend who is now a captain in the Bangkok police, a motorbike taxi rider and a journalist. His loyal assistant is the motherly Doi, who helps out with both the translation and detection sides of the business, as well as offering a wry commentary on Vijay’s various misadventures.
If all this sounds like the makings of a cozy crime yarn, then that is to overlook both the book’s brilliantly evoked setting and the region’s dark and troubled history which underpins the story.
When the novel begins, it’s the middle of the hot season. In classic noir style, the Venetian blinds cast bars of intense sunlight onto one wall of Vijay’s office and a struggling fan moves the heat around. What Vijay really needs is not a pair of detective fiction cliches but an efficient air-conditioning unit. His fingers are so sweaty, the pen drops from his hand.
Into this overheated atmosphere steps Malinee, Vijay’s ex, with a doozy of case for him to investigate. A friend of hers, English antique dealer Arthur Cavendish, fell to his death from his 26th floor apartment. It looks like suicide, but Malinee suspects foul play. Whether out of guilt over the way their relationship ended or because he still carries a torch for her, Vijay agrees to take on the case for free – an indulgence his perpetually cash-strapped business can ill afford.
And so begins a treacherous journey into a murky world where nothing is what it seems and past crimes still cast their shadow over the present. Antiques-smuggling and fake artefacts from neighbouring Cambodia intertwine with the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime and military corruption.
Vijay Mistry is a wonderfully likeable creation; a bit of a blagger, and occasionally economical with the truth, but with a good heart and sound instincts. After becoming a detective by accident, he has embraced the role, hand-painting a sign and printing dual business cards. Identity is one of the book’s key themes, with not just Vijay, but a whole range of characters assuming and occupying their self-created personas.
Like Raymond Chandler before him, Somasundrum excels at conveying an entire life in a few deftly crafted sentences depicting a character’s living quarters:
The door opened to a single room, slightly smaller than Vijay’s. In the
far corner was a mattress on the floor with a thin blanket bunched up at its
foot. To one side of it was a plastic door. Seeing Vijay’s gaze, Noi said, “I
always told him it was bad feng shui to sleep with his head to the toilet.”
From the teeming narrow streets of Chinatown to the city’s luxury glass towers, Bangkok bursts into unruly life in this finely written and thoroughly satisfying whodunnit.

The Case of the Two-Face Killer is published by Joffe on 16th June.
Reviewer R.N. Morris is the author of Cover Story published by Sharpe Books.