The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so the well-beaten adage goes. Nobody better proves this as a truism than Val Benson, the lead character in Jame DiBiasio’s first novel Gaijin Cowgirl, a thrilling and often violent romp of a story that takes the reader on a fast-paced journey from the hostess bars of Tokyo to Hong Kong to the concrete and natural jungles of Thailand.
The plot revolves around gold stolen by the Japanese during WWII in the form of an enormous solid gold Buddha, and the desperate efforts by the multinational cast of characters (bar hostesses, a former Japanese colonel, vicious businessmen, a gold hunter, Thai and foreign Muay Thai boxers, a Thai journalist, a former CIA man and an American Congressman) to recover the treasure from its hiding place deep in the jungles of Thailand’s Kanchanaburi province – the site of the River Kwai Bridge and the infamous Death Railway.
Val is a chaos attracter. We’ve all known at least one or two in our lives: people who have a knack for finding themselves in out-of-control situations that sweep up everyone around that person in a swirl of destructive force, that often as not leaves the person at the centre of it virtually unscathed, while relatively innocent bystanders, guilty only by association with such a person, pay the price. And in this book, plenty of prices are paid.
The latest blood and guts novel from ‘quality pulp’ publisher Crime Wave Press, Gaijin Cowgirl is a gripping and escalating read from the beginning until the final pages and the perfect companion with which to while away several hours on a long train journey, or a quiet evening at home. It is not ideal toilet reading, however, since you’ll end up staying in the bathroom flipping the pages for so long that your family will wonder what you’re doing in there.
And for those looking for something sexy, there’s not that much sex in it, with any sex scenes ‘fading to black’ and leaving the nitty gritty of things to the reader’s imagination – if they care to distract themselves from the sweep of the story. Titillation is not the aim of this book.
Gaijin Cowgirl, by Jame DiBiasio, is now available in eBook form from Amazon.com for $6.24.