Fieldwork

Mischa Berlinski, a fictionalized version of the author narrates this exotic thriller set in northern Thailand. Immigrating to be with his girlfriend Rachel, who is a schoolteacher, Mischa takes a job with one of the local English-language newspapers. When a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story involving the suicide of an American anthropologist named Martiya van der Leun serving a life sentence for murder, Mischa cannot help but investigate further. But what begins as simple curiosity becomes an obsessive quest that leaads him to search for the motivations behind the crimes. "Fieldwork" is an offbeat debut that combines the best elementments of a travelogue and mystery into one story.