I
had thought that every possible combination of plots concerning the
relationship between foreign men and Thai bargirls had already been covered.
A quick browse through your favorite bookstore will attest to this, so when
Monsoon Books sent me Stage IV by Erich R. Sysak (ISBN
978-981-08-5435-5, Monsoon, 2011), I was loathe to open it. I have read too
many of the genre. However, the back cover was so full of new slants to the
old situation, that I opened it after all.
The plot revolves around ‘viatication’, a new one on me,
whereby people sell their life insurance benefits to the highest bidder
before they die, and the new owner collects when the person expires. Looks
like a win-win situation all round when you at least get to spend some of
your own insurance.
The book now brings in the main characters, revolving
around Lawson Banks, a man with a Stage IV cancer, which we are told means
that he will die soon. He sells his life insurance, pockets the money and
comes to Hua Hin in Thailand where he eventually settles in with a bargirl
called Benz. However, the lifestyle seems to have been good for him. After
seven years he is still alive, despite his Stage IV cancer, which in theory
gave him a life expectancy measured in months, and not years.
One should feel happy for someone like this, but there
were those who were not so thrilled - the trio who bought the rights to the
payout on death. They had provided a lump sum, and were now waiting to
collect three million USD, but now after waiting eight years, their patience
was wearing more than a little thin.
Author Sysak does a good job in describing the three
ex-school mates in the viatication scheme, with Keller, the lawyer, the one
with the least scruples, if any at all. “He was perfectly willing to commit
crimes in order to get ahead, to get rich. If only he knew how.” That “how”
came when he was offered a part in the three way gamble on other people’s
futures.
When it came down to the realization that millions of
dollars were awaiting them if Lawson Banks would only die, it is Keller who
undertakes to finalize the insurance policy.
Having arrived in Thailand, Keller then goes looking for
Lawson to administer the coup de grace, but then finds there are other
assassins looking for Lawson. In the interim, Lawson is spending time
avoiding being killed and then wondering just who it is that wants him dead,
and double guessing himself at the same time.
A very different slant on the Thai-Farang equation, but
one that does show some of the essential differences between the two ethnic
groups. Towards the end of the book, Lawson muses, “He’d forgiven Benz for
everything and anything because she was more than a lover and a caregiver;
she was a great friend he would never fully understand.” And that almost
describes most successful Thai-Farang associations.
It is available from Asia Books, Bookazine and Kinokuniya stores and the
list price is $15.95.
