Lightning on the Sun - Hardcover

Bingham, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385488564 ISBN 13: 9780385488563

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

Synopsis

Reinventing the Graham Greene/Robert Stone novel for modern readers, the author creates a thriller set in modern-day Cambodia and New York City as he follows the adventures of would-be drug smuggler Asher, his partner, Julie and his unwitting journalist "mule," Reese.

About this title

Review:

"[A] smart, stinging literary thriller reminiscent of Graham Greene and Robert Stone."-San Francisco Chronicle

"[A] gripping literary thriller.... Bingham effortlessly builds suspense."-Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A powerful story about desire, greed, and the hope for redemption in a fallen world."-Alan Cheuse

From the Back Cover:

Asher is in trouble. He's washed up in Phnom Penh, the UNESCO monument preservation work has dried up, and he's at the end of his spiritual and financial ropes. But highest-quality heroin is wonderfully cheap in this dangerous and corrupt part of the world.

So with funds borrowed from the loan-sharking massage parlour owner Mr. Hawk and the aid of a journalist and 'citizen' Reese as an unwitting mule, he plans to move some weight to New York, where supply will happily meet demand.

His partner in this plan is Julie, his once and future love, a beautiful Harvard-educated dabbler in trendy nihilism and fashionable marginalisation, currently working behind the bar at Stopless, a downtown strip club. It's all been carefully worked out, but when Julie decides to improvise, the plans swiftly and dangerously unravel in ways that will put the lives of these three complexly flawed young Americans in mortal danger.

Robert Bingham's Lightning on the Sun is a beautifully plotted and written novel with the fast-paced suspense of a thriller and the moral resonance and exotic setting of one of Graham Greene's classic works. The novel's sense of place, whether steamy Phnom Penh, or bustling New York or a leafy New England prep school, is unerring, as is its sense of post-modern moral compromise and the disillusioning ways of the world. It offers an exhilarating read; the literary legacy of one of his generation's most gifted writers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385488564
• ISBN 13: 9780385488563
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 291