Rich Kill, Poor Kill

4/5 Very Good.

The 2nd in these updated Inspector Stanley Low Thrillers is a searing, fast paced Thriller/Expose on the real Singapore.

The clean, safe modern metropolis stripped back to its authentic beating heart by Neil Humphrey’s is done so well.

This time around, with Low and all his quirks and ways , cast aside to rot before being dragged back into the limelight, finds the polarising detective on the hunt for a serial killer, who begins to target the last people the Singapore Big Wigs want to see killed - the tourists, the Money.

A well crafted and pace pounding thriller, Low is an up and down character who you can only be drawn to, as well as another returning character in Charlie Chan.

High Quality Crime, Authentic feeling and really very entertaining, I enjoyed this as much as the first book, and happily have the 3rd, and hopefully not final book to read next.

Rich Kill,Poor Kill is the third book I've read in Neil Humphreys' Inspector Stanley Low series and I'm hooked. Low is a Bi-Polar Singaporean detective loathed more by his bosses than some of the criminals he investigates, where with the latter there is often mutual respect and almost kinship even with those he has put behind bars.

This is a fairly simple story ,a young migrant woman is found dead in an alley in Singapore's Chinatown. With assumptions made and the low status of the victim there's little interest from the police or authorities until the body count mounts and it becomes apparent that Singapore's first serial killer is on the loose and is targeting "more important" victims, something that is at the core of the book. After thinking they'd put Low "out of sight,out of mind" ,somewhere they're safe from his psychotic rages and blatantly expressed contempt, his bosses finally have to let him loose to crack the case in his own inimitable style.

This is really my kind of book,Low is an outrageous character,damaged after a case that has made him a national hero so his bosses don't dare sack him. Beneath the madness there's compassion ,Low doesn't tolerate any kind of belittling of society's less fortunate and heaven help anyone else he hears or sees anyone else doing it. Low's not so much a loose cannon as a full on barrage, this series combines graphic violence, laugh out loud comedy and often brutal commentary on Singaporean society and the establishment that show the other side of the "Asian Monaco" most of us know.

I was glad to see in this book that the publishers have moved the glossary of local Singaporean terms to the front , in the first book it was at the back and I came across it after breaking up my reading after spending too much time using search engines.

Fans of Stuart MacBride will love this series,Neil Humphreys is a real talent and I hope there is more to come from Stanley Low. Currently there are 3 books in the series available in Britain and I'd advise people to read them in order to get the most out of them.

Very sweary and with graphic violence so please don't go for this series if that's a problem for you,otherwise try something a bit different and enjoy.