The Vampire of Siam - Jim Newport

Live dangerously. Make friends with a Vampire.

Martin Larue, wealthy beyond measure, is a wandering expat, who has made Bangkok his sometime home. His days are spent dabbling in cinema journalism and enjoying the finer things in life. But he is jaded and bored and his editor at the Bangkok Times (one of many worldwide owned by his father) thinks he needs some excitement. He sends him out with the police to dig amongst the dirt beneath Bangkok's façade. His guide is the enigmatic Lt.-Colonel Boonsong. The world-weary Martin finds his senses jolted when he unwittingly accompanies police to a murder scene at the centuries-old Hernando Cemetery. Before he is led away he glimpses the body of a girl with dyed-hair sprawled naked across the cold stone bier in the center of the tomb.

Reluctantly Martin uncovers a serial killer in the City of Angels. His article is front-page news and leads to a visit from the murderer himself - a 175-year-old French vampire. Ramonne Delacroix is sophisticated, worldly, charming and dangerous. At first determined to kill him, Ramonne finds in Martin a kindred spirit. An unlikely bond is formed as Martin becomes intoxicated by the vampire's power to reveal the past glories of Siam and Angkor Wat that he has witnessed. He divulges to Martin that he has been paying off Boonsong to carry on his bloodsucking activities without interruption. Martin agrees to transfer his wealth to the vampire for the privilege of following him on his sex and death binges in Bangkok.

An exotic tale of lust, greed and the supernatural, "The Vampire Of Siam" follows the strange path that a powerful friendship takes as it unravels, and Martin Larue learns a lesson in the preciousness of life's every moment - from a vampire.