Acknowledgments

First place in the gratitude parade goes to Jonathan Whipple, who told me about a card game in which one player won the right to write another’s biography. This situation allowed me to cut by about thirty percent the amount of time it took me to get Poke into trouble. The game also gave me the alternating series of opening chapters that contrast the rich, uselessly throwing money away high above the pavement, with the people who scuffle for survival on the sidewalks.

Profuse thanks are due to my editor at Morrow, Peggy Hageman, who helped me to focus the book more precisely and to clarify some confusing story points, all the while acting as though the improvements were entirely my idea. My former editor, Marjorie Braman, suggested some key plot elements, among them the return of Superman, that made the book stronger. And my agent, Bob Mecoy, went over the manuscript with a critical eye and a mental X-Acto knife to tighten things up and reinforce some of the bearing beams.

The book’s wet, wonderful jacket is the work of James Iacobelli. And the manuscript inside the jacket had the benefit (as have all of Poke’s adventures) of an enlightened copyedit by Maureen Sugden, who knows her Hokusai from her Hiroshige and suggested literally dozens of improvements. Still don’t know about some of those commas, though.

This book, like all the others, was written mostly in coffeehouses in America and Southeast Asia. I’m especially grateful to the people at Novel Cafe in Santa Monica, California, and Bee Bee Cafe in West Los Angeles, as well as to those angels of mercy who fed me and kept me caffeinated in Phnom Penh, at Corner 33, Black Canyon Coffee, and Freebird. Coffee World in Bangkok also gets some of the blame.

As always, the writing of this novel had a soundtrack, courtesy of an overstuffed iPod. Most frequently played were Bob Dylan, Rufus Wainwright, Rilo Kiley, Vienna Teng, Shawn Colvin, Conor Oberst, John Prine, Vampire Weekend, Angelique Kidjo, Emmylou Harris (always and forever), Mary Gauthier, Elvis Costello, Rihanna, Delbert McClinton, Taylor Swift, Patti Griffin, Calexico, Over the Rhine, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, the perpetually heartbreaking Townes Van Zandt, TV on the Radio, The Hold Steady, Tegan and Sara, and Kyung-Wha Chung. And about four hundred others.

My deepest and most heartfelt thanks go to the person I’m blessed to share my life with, my wife, Munyin Choy-Hallinan. As this book’s first reader, she helped me make parts of it better and strengthen (or at least plaster over) its weaknesses. Without her, it would never have been finished.

About the Author

TIMOTHY HALLINAN has written ten novels and a work of nonfiction. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Southeast Asia, primarily Thailand, where he has lived off and on since 1985. For more than twenty years, he ran one of America’s top television consulting firms, advising many Fortune 500 companies. He has also taught writing. Hallinan is married to Munyin Choy.

www.timothyhallinan.com

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