(The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels Book 1)
Mystery / Thriller
Date Published: January 16, 2014
“LAUNDRY MAN is in the tough-talking tradition of Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain and deeply infused with a sense of place. Jake Needham gets things right.” -- Asia Review of Books
Once a high-flying international lawyer, a member of the innermost circles of government power, Jack Shepherd has abandoned the savage politics of Washington for the lethargic backwater of Bangkok, where he is now just an unremarkable professor at an unimportant university in an insignificant city.
Or is he?
A secretive Asian bank collapses under dubious circumstances. A former law partner Shepherd thought was dead admits he was behind the disgraced bank and coerces Shepherd into helping him track the hundreds of millions of dollars that disappeared in the collapse. A twisting trail of deceit leads Shepherd from Bangkok to Hong Kong and eventually to an isolated villa on the fabled island of Phuket where he confronts the evil at the heart of a monstrous game of international treachery.
A lawyer among people who laugh at the law, a friend in a land where today’s allies are tomorrow’s fugitives, Jack Shepherd battles a global tide of corruption, extortion and murder that is fast engulfing the new life he has made for himself in Thailand
Once a high-flying international lawyer, a member of the innermost circles of government power, Jack Shepherd has abandoned the savage politics of Washington for the lethargic backwater of Bangkok, where he is now just an unremarkable professor at an unimportant university in an insignificant city.
Or is he?
A secretive Asian bank collapses under dubious circumstances. A former law partner Shepherd thought was dead admits he was behind the disgraced bank and coerces Shepherd into helping him track the hundreds of millions of dollars that disappeared in the collapse. A twisting trail of deceit leads Shepherd from Bangkok to Hong Kong and eventually to an isolated villa on the fabled island of Phuket where he confronts the evil at the heart of a monstrous game of international treachery.
A lawyer among people who laugh at the law, a friend in a land where today’s allies are tomorrow’s fugitives, Jack Shepherd battles a global tide of corruption, extortion and murder that is fast engulfing the new life he has made for himself in Thailand
REVIEW
Superb Complex Thriller – BUY IT
Jack Shepherd is living the life in Bangkok. Teaching at Chulalongkorn University, his lawyering days are behind him – or so he thought. A two o’clock in the morning call awakens him from a sound sleep, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the other guy on the line. He insists he’s Barry Gale, but as everyone knows, Gale is dead.
Oh, this book is a winner!
LAUNDRY MAN by Jake Needham is the kind of book you hope to find, but rarely do. From the first page, it sinks its hook into a reader’s soft palate, and doesn’t let go. Good on so many levels, it’s sort of frightening that someone can tell a story this well, but that’s what happens in this non-stop plunge into a conspiratorial abyss.
