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Jumpers (Vincent Calvino Crime Novel Book 16) by [Christopher G. Moore]

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Christopher G. Moore

Jumpers (Vincent Calvino Crime Novel Book 16) Kindle Edition

by Christopher G. Moore (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Calvino investigates the death of a friend, a Canadian painter. The medical examiner finds the young man has ingested an exit drug, and the police verdict of suicide seems justified. But in Bangkok appearances have a habit of deceiving. Sometimes jumpers are given a leg up in their leap to the next life. Fingering the helper can be a risky business, and for Calvino this promises to be one of those times.

Print length

389 pages
Language

English
Publication date

October 29, 2016
Reading age

15 - 18 years
Grade level

8 - 12
File size

1775 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jumpers is in large part a meditation on life and death and the tenuousness of affection among family and friends... In its refinement and pensiveness, and with its masterful fly-on-the-wall dialogue, the novel owes more to Joseph Conrad than the likes of Mickey Spillane or Dashiell Hammett... [I]n place of the caustic language and car-chase haste so often found in crime fiction, there is nobility to the writing that makes this book a loftier pleasure to read, a dignity arising from contemplation and lingering appreciative gazes at the aesthetics of each setting... [T]here's a great deal of heart and heartfelt writing, and confidence that the human spirit will always prevail."

--Paul Dorsey, The Nation (Thailand)

"Moore excels once again at deciphering the culture clash we call Bangkok... Jumpers takes you on a personal and cultural journey. It leaves you with as many questions as answers but that is quite alright with me."--Kevin Cummings, CulturMag

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01M8OVETH
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Heaven Lake Press (October 29, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 29, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1775 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 389 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 6167503346
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #756,974 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #286 in Asian Literature (Kindle Store)
- #2,733 in Political Thrillers & Suspense
- #3,070 in Noir Crime

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California Guy

Dig Deep into Jumpers - Find Out Who is Hiding What from Whom

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2016

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Christopher G. Moore is a master message teller as he crafts his crime tales. Jumpers is #16 in the series and as a long time fan I am familiar with the cast of characters, Vincent Calvino, Bangkok P.I. and his cover my back, retired Royal Thai Police General Pratt. Not many friends have matching entry wounds for looking after each other. Ratana his loyal secretary and the cranky and pleasure seeking pal, McPhail.

Jumpers features the complex, questionable suicide of Raphael a young and talented artist who likes to paint the working girls of the Bangkok night. Raphael has a voracious appetite for painting and women with a little Muay Thai on the side and his appearance is a mixture of flashbacks and memories. I liked him better alive than dead but as suicides go he went out in style. Jumpers came across to me as a straight mystery with plenty of components, including a freedom portrait series that Calvino is part of, painting forgeries, counterfeit money, the omnipresent secret notebook that contains incriminating info, a great Chinese heavy named Sia Lang and a Hong Kong billionaire who could prove problematic for Calvino.

We learn that, "What an artist looks for is what other people hide." But it turns out the artist is hiding a great deal himself not the least of which is a cool $750,000 which he has left in his will to the suicide hotline group where he used to volunteer. Vincent is more brainy than tough guy these days, more likely to be found cleaning his gun than firing it in junta ruled Bangkok. Pratt, likewise, can't be found playing the saxophone but he gets plenty of apropos Shakespeare quotes in, at one point musing that the Bard must have been a Thai in a former life. There is still plenty of action as Calvino does manage a good head slam in a bar with four sharks swimming in a tank overhead and justice eventually gets carried out noir style, by the other bad guys and there are plenty of them. But as Calvino concludes late in the novel, "Dig deep enough down and you will find some good in everyone." That is certainly true of the philandering Rafael and the many models who drop by to shed their clothes at his busy studio. A line I particularly liked delivered by Ratana during Raphael's Buddhist funeral, "That's what the dead did to the living: left them with a deep abiding sense of failure." Deep stuff and too often true.

There were times where a story board would have been helpful to keep track of the characters and plot points but the author does a good job of tying things up at the end and we find out a recurring question for Vinny that many a Thai expat has asked himself: should he stay or should he go? Moore excels once again in deciphering the culture clash we call Bangkok. While the story ,I think, is the best since Missing in Rangoon it's all the message points that make a Moore novel worth the time for me. As when Calvino goes to visit a psychologist and counselor named Gavin who runs the Bangkok Suicide Hotline. It's like a cerebral shootout at the I'm OK, You're OK corral.

I like the way Vincent thinks nowadays. Whether he has changed or I have changed I am not sure. As is written late in the book, "In the noir landscape of Bangkok, the default was tragedy; things rarely ended well." A possible exception is Charlie, a Golden Retriever. Charlie lost two owners to suicides in Jumpers, but I see a good future for him, and Vincent Calvino too. Jumpers is a dense read full of great messages and those messages, I think, will be different for each reader. That is Moore's strength. Jumpers takes you on a personal and cultural journey. It leaves you with as many questions as answers but that is quite alright with me. Dig deep into Jumpers by Christopher G. Moore and you will find plenty of good messages sitting right alongside the default tragedies that find everyone, whether you live your life as a work of art or not.

One person found this helpful

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Dr. Gregory W. Frazier

An entertaining study of The Dark Side via suicide by a great fictionist

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2016

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Buy this book! I gave JUMPERS five stars as I did MARRIAGE TREE and earlier MISSING IN RANGOON. I do not get a discount, kick-back or free cup of coffee for pimping books by Christopher G. Moore, I am just slanted towards the topics he presents and respect the way he presents them.

A well known film director, script writer and actor in the Bangkok/Southeast Asia theme once said, “I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and someday actor, rather than a sex symbol.” I don’t know about Moore’s acting abilities or perceived symbol, but he’s got the “great writer” section covered with this and his other books.

JUMPERS is another cracking good read from a cracking great writer, this one delving into the dark world of suicide. For the newbie to his lead character, Vincent Calvino, and Calvino’s private investigator life in Thailand, there’s enough background included to see the whole picture. For the Mooreoholic, we get our jonesing fed with plenty of new opinions and looks at Southeast Asia, as well as flashbacks to earlier reads.

Retired Thai police General Pratt is back in JUMPERS, quoting Shakespeare while following leads to drug bad guys. Back too is Calvino’s cigarette smoking and hard drinking pal Ed McPhail, who laughingly says, “My mother said I grew up dancing to the wrong music,” and later compliments a lady by saying, “Baby, you’re so beautiful I’d drink your bathwater.”

And then Moore injects his take on life and death through the head of Calvino with wisdoms like, “Avoiding someone else’s death is second only to avoiding one’s own.”

I had one of those “Hey, I know exactly what he is describing” moments when I read the description of two white companions of a heavy, as “…two farang who could have passed as TSA anal-cavity-search-agents.” Wahoo! That simile got my high score for the day, while picturing Chevy Chase in the movie FLETCH, bent over the table in the doctor’s office getting a rectal exam, thinking the TSA guys enjoyed their work as much as the doc in the film seemingly did.

Moore adds a new Calvino Law when describing the bureaucracy in the police department through Pratt, when the retired police officer says, “The only safe solution is not to do your job, let someone else do the work, and if it works, you take the credit."

For a Canadian, writing about life in Bangkok, Thailand and Southeast Asia in the broader presentations, Moore entertains the Yankee reader by inserting enough about America to keep the reading rolling, like when he wrote, “There were alpha males and wannabe males,…who like blacks and whites at an Alabama restaurant knew better than to try to mingle.” I suspect a Brit or Aussie might scratch their head reading that, not knowing that an Alabama restaurant is not a brand name restaurant but an eatery in the deep southern state of Alabama in the United States of America, a state well known for the racial division between the blacks and whites.

JUMPERS – my most entertaining and educational reading recently, money well spent on a book versus a movie, scrolling through social media or trolling the Net.

Educational? I learned that if I am going to be a “jumper,” it should be from the 10th floor or above.

3 people found this helpful

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Carl Anduze

Bangkok can be dangerous if you push the wrong buttons. . .

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2020

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Even inadvertently so it's best to arm yourself with Christopher G. Moore's novel Jumpers. It is his last in the Vincent Calvino series of which I've enjoyed many.

You will learn the essence of man outside his comfort zone or the zones that he can be shoved into by not understanding where he indeed in reality stands. If you a Thailand tourist for the first time it can be an exhilarating whirl of exotic fun. If you are an ancient specimen like me, it can be either very rewarding or dangerous but more likely both.

Let Mr. Moore guide you through the intricacies of Thai customs, history, political nuances, psyche, and religion. They are all intermixed in a sometimes confusing but delectable bouillabaisse that will aid you in enjoying your stay be it physical or literary. His books can go as far as you wish to dive into the real Bangkok.

Jumpers will take you to the depths and heights of Thai society in a thrilling complex fountain of master-crafted words.

Take the plunge. Dare. Be a man or woman of courage and honor.

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P.K.F.

Suicide in Bangkok

Reviewed in Germany on November 13, 2016

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Thailand has changed in the many years Vincent Calvino has been around, and so has he. But in the core he’s remained the same: an honest man in a crooked world, trying to stay true to himself, even when forced to accept a compromise. But he’s becoming older and wiser like all of us, if we are lucky.

I always wonder which parts of his novels Christopher Moore just invents and which ones are rooted deep in experience. Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t Want to *know*, absolutely not, I just wonder.

It’s part of the fascination of a really good novel that you never can discern where reality stops and Imagination sets in. Interweaving both to create a reality which is more than reality is the hallmark of great writers.

And if it comes in a package with a gripping story, as is the case with the Calvino-novels, I simply can't resist.

2 people found this helpful

Miki101.Micha 🐭

Some Strange Suicides in Bangkok and Vincent Calvino...

Reviewed in Italy on November 18, 2016

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... stuck right in the middle of them, of those 'Jumpers'. Who often leave this world for the next not even by jumping...
The Great Unravelling Trilogy surely has burnt many everlasting pictures into my mind. Which I will always remember as 'clouded mirrors in Rangoon' and 'Banksy-art murals drawn by smartphones on Bangkok walls'. And right in the middle, some poor ghosts that were haunting Vincent Calvino. Bringing him very near to cross the thin line that normally holds back farangs from becoming one of the in-famous 'Jumpers'. Those often old-hand ex-pats who only want to leave Thailand in a coffin or an urn. But with the help of some old and new friends he had mastered the chaos that dominated his state of mind for a long time.
Now he is older, maybe wiser, surely a lot calmer and quite settled. And has made a certain peace with Thailand aka the Land of Smiles and with Bangkok and their inhabitants. And in his own way, with the new Regime, too. But the quiet life he desires is suddenly interrupted by a violent death. Raphael Pascal, a very gifted Canadian painter only in his mid-twenties has suddenly, out of the blue, committed suicide. An overdose of a strange drug it seems, and his girlfriend conferms this fact. And Raphael, who was always feeling a great bond to the painter Chigi - one of Vinnie's ancestors - has made our hero the executor of his Last Will. Vinnie, who has been painted by Raphael as the 6th Step of a series called 'The 6 Steps of Freedom'. A strange collection of paintings, with Vinnie now the only 'model' of the six who is still alive. All the others - like the painter himself right now - are gone. Have died or a violent death or by some strange type of overdoses - just like the artist. But it seems every picture of that series of paintings was done on commission - for a very wealthy and influent Chinese mogul abroad. Who is now claiming his obviously yet payed artworks. Together with some very ugly and insane conditions.
With the former General and best friend Pratt now retired, Calvino is only a normal farang in great danger. To become himself one of the so-called 'Jumpers'. Those farangs that cannot bear the way of life Thailand is offering them: To be strangers in a strange world - and that forever and a day...
At the very end - after a lot of death and darkest intrigues including a Suicide Help Line - there will be some very important decisions for Vincent Calvino to make. Because 'outside of Thailand the World is on fire' - and sooner or later the heat of it will catch up with all of us...

An absolutely memorable thriller that has to be read with very much attention, looking at the facts from every point of view. Because in 'The Land of the Free' there are many layers of truth. Including some very harsh experiences about the status even a long-term ex-pat as well connected as Vincent Calvino will never reach: That of a Thai. And there are only Thais and very much below them the Farangs from every part of the outside world in Thailand - and will always be.
An absolute must for all those readers who are really interested in that strange part of our planet that is South East Asia. Which is sadly more and more falling under the influence of the super-power in the north - China.
In my eyes simply one of the best books in a long long series of winners.
Thank You, Mr Moore. And... thanks, Vinnie and Friends!

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