Mr. Sanuh - Book Review

The intermingling of various cultures in creating taut thrillers requires an insistent number of different ideas in terms of how different ideas work and relating their apparent worthiness while still maintaining a sense of tension within the work. "Mr. Sanuh" [Domanic Domba/Rosedog/286pgs] wants to bring the multifaceted elements of corporate espionage to the tethers of Thailand and beyond. While his ideas are sound, the interrelating aspects of what is being shown become a bit maddening, not for their complexity, but for their banality. The narrative follows a man who is kidnapped and taken away from his family who plans to exact revenge by causing strife from within the company that blackballed him. This man, who goes by the novel's moniker, tries to place his son Keri, who is moving up in the ranks, in a power position to take over the company. The progression though becomes invariably convoluted. Most of the time this is for no apparent reason. The book shifts between exposition of board room politics from the perspective of a third person without giving half motivations for said actions. In specific point, that is the novel's main weakness is its relation of details in specifically the wrong way. The idea of time passing and what people are eating for dinner does not establish the structure unless it is used to set the scene (which it really doesn't). The author seems to have a wealth of knowledge about the reason having been an engineer (as his bio states). However the lack of preciseness and a torrent of density in sometimes unrelated element (i.e. the ghost tour/Borneo Travel connection) simply becomes noise at a certain point undermining the narrative intention from the very beginning. Out of 5, I give "Mr. Sanuh" a 1.