Christopher G. Moore

Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian writer who once taught law at the University of British Columbia. After his first book His Lordship’s Arsenal was published in New York to a critical acclaim in 1985, Moore became a full-time writer and has so far written 16 novels and one collection of interlocked short stories.

Moore has attained somewhat of a cult status among his readers in Asia and Europe and has an increasingly strong following in North America. Moore is probably best known by his cult classics, Land of Smiles Trilogy, his behind-the-smiles study of his adopted country, Thailand, and his highly popular Vincent Calvino Private Eye series.

Macleans has best summarized Moore’s work: “Moore’s noir thriller and literary fiction—like Graham Greene, he alternates between ‘entertainment’ and serious novels—are subtle and compelling evocations of a part of the world rarely seen through our eyes.”

Gore Vidal said of the Land of Smiles Trilogy: “The whole effect is very real—particularly the revelation of those razor teeth back of the Smile.”

January Magazine has said that the Vincent Calvino series “recalls the international ‘entertainments’ of Graham Greene or John le Carré, but the hard-bitten worldview and the cynical, bruised idealism of his battered hero is right out of Chandler.” The third novel in the series (Cut Out or Stunde Null in Phnom Penh) has won the prestigious German Critics Award for Crime Fiction (Deutscher Krimi Preis) in 2004.

Moore has been called “complex, moody, rewarding” (Chicago Sun-Times) as well as a writer “in the great literary tradition that hasn’t really touched down since Somerset Maugham” (The Globe and Mail). He is often praised for his in-depth knowledge and sharp insights about the part of the world he writes about. “One of Moore’s greatest strengths is his knowledge of Southeast Asian history,” said Newsweek. He is known, in the words of the National Post, for the way he “captures the bewitching spirit and rice-cooker passions of Southeast Asia.” To the Vancouver Sun, Moore is “the most important recreator of Thailand for a western audience.” In Thailand, where Moore has lived for the past two decades, the Bangkok Post said, “To paraphrase Graham Greene in another context, Moore is our man in Bangkok.”