A Good Death
*Starred Review* Cox’s first novel sneaks up on the reader. It begins with PI Sebastian Damon winning an assignment to investigate the death in Bangkok of a Laotian refugee who made her way to the U.S. and ultimately became vice president of a Boston bank. Her life insurer thinks the claim is fishy and sends Damon to find her. Against long odds in teeming Bangkok, and with the help of Sam Honeyman, an American Vietnam vet expat, he does. But the woman, Linda Watt, explains to them that her father was a U.S. pilot during the Vietnam War and that he may still be alive in the wild Laotian mountains. Her life-insurance scam was to finance buying his freedom. So begins a story that channels Conrad, Kipling, and Francis Ford Coppola. Damon, Honeyman, and Watt, pursued by a crooked Bangkok cop who helped Linda fake her death but then blackmailed her, begin a perilous odyssey to a region few westerners have seen since the war. Simply workmanlike at the outset, A Good Death becomes an insightful, transcendent adventure. Cox, who has traveled Asia for three decades, creates a vivid sense of place, ties his characters’ rich backstories to the tragic war, and illuminates the current plight of Laotian hill tribes. A Good Death is another example of the only positive to emerge from the Vietnam War—fine writing. --Thomas Gaughan