Hallinan, Timothy 1949(?)-

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Hallinan, Timothy 1949(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born June 26, 1949 (some sources say 1942), in Los Angeles, CA; married Munyin Choy. Education: University of California Los Angeles, B.A., M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Santa Monica, CA; Bangkok, Thailand; Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Office—P.O. Box 4400, Venice, CA 90294.

CAREER:

Writer. Stone/Hallinan (a public relations firm), Los Angeles, CA, founder and partner; Hallinan Consulting, Los Angeles, founder. Former songwriter and musician.

WRITINGS:

"SIMEON GRIST" SUSPENSE SERIES

The Four Last Things, New American Library (New York, NY), 1989.

Everything but the Squeal, New American Library (New York, NY), 1990.

Skin Deep, Dutton (New York, NY), 1991.

Incinerator, Morrow (New York, NY), 1992.

The Man with No Time, Morrow (New York, NY), 1993.

The Bone Polisher, Morrow (New York, NY), 1995.

"POKE RAFFERTY" SUSPENSE SERIES

A Nail through the Heart, Morrow (New York, NY), 2007.

The Fourth Watcher: A Novel of Bangkok, Morrow (New York, NY), 2008.

SIDELIGHTS:

Timothy Hallinan is a Los Angeles-based writer who divides his time between the United States, Thailand, and Cambodia. He began his career as a songwriter and musician, spending a significant portion of his college years performing at the legendary Troubadour nightclub in Hollywood. He has worked in radio and television, and in addition to writing novels, he founded the Stone/Hallinan public relations firm and Hallinan Consulting, both of which focus on public relations for educational and public television.

Hallinan's "Simeon Grist" murder mystery series stars UCLA English professor-turned-private investigator Simeon Grist, a former hippie who smokes and drinks too much. Simeon debuted in The Four Last Things, in which the detective is hired to trail Sally Oldfield, who is suspected of embezzling money from a record company and subsequently discovered to be embroiled in a holy roller religious scam. In Skin Deep, Simeon works for a television producer who wants him to keep tabs on Toby Vane, a TV star with a habit of beating up women. When a woman Toby was last seen with winds up murdered, Simeon must determine if Toby is guilty, or if he was set up. Hallinan, a native in the entertainment industry, "writes with an insider's authority," according to a reviewer for the online journal Fresh Fiction.

Everything but the Squeal finds Simeon on the hunt for a Kansas girl who ran away to Hollywood to become a star. His search takes him to dive bars, flop houses, and teenage prostitute hangouts, to which he gains entrance by enlisting the help of his godchild and her young boyfriend. He discovers that the Kansas girl was lured to California by an unsavory talent agent and a crooked cop. The book is violent, according to Sybil Steinberg writing in Publishers Weekly, but she concluded that Hallinan's "skillful pacing" leads to a "gory climax and somewhat reassuring ending."

Simeon tries to bust a human-trafficking ring in Los Angeles's Chinatown in The Man with No Time. It begins with Simeon's ex-girlfriend, Eleanor, who asks him to help track down her brother's abducted children. Eleanor's brother turns out to be the culprit, and the chase leads Simeon to the even more sinister Charlie Wah, a violent Vietnamese slave runner. Readers "may find Grist's first grisly encounter with Wah unnecessarily brutal," wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Incinerator presents Simeon with the case of a serial killer who douses homeless people with gasoline and sets them ablaze. The self-proclaimed Incinerator hails himself as a hero who rids the world of unnecessary people. Police make little headway in the case until the killer inadvertently murders a wealthy man who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The man's daughter asks Simeon to take on the case.

The Bone Polisher concerns a serial killer who preys on gay men in West Hollywood, eviscerating them before sending letters to the victim's family, alerting them to their loved one's homosexuality. While Simeon has never been anything other than staunchly heterosexual (he is finally about to marry Eleanor), he pursues the case at the behest of a dying man who believes his partner's life is in danger. Indeed, the man soon turns up dead, and Simeon launches head first into a mid-life existential crisis. Worried that his life is not meaningful enough, and overwhelmed by the evil he witnesses, he wonders if he can make a commitment to Eleanor and overcome his deepest fears. A Publishers Weekly reviewer claimed that "Simeon seems a bit old for the whining angst," but George Needham, writing in Booklist, appreciated The Bone Polisher as both "a straightforward detective novel" and "a slightly off-kilter philosophical tome."

A Nail through the Heart is Hallinan's first non-Simeon Grist novel. It features Poke Rafferty, a travel writer in Thailand investigating the disappearance of people who supposedly died in the 2004 tsunami. The plot features shadowy Khmer Rouge figures, sexual deviants, and opportunistic street children—orphans from the tsunami—in the dark mélange that is Bangkok, a city whose grungy exterior hides its deeply spiritual, Buddhist foundation. Along the way Poke falls in love with Rose, a former bartender, and considers adopting one of the orphans. Poke longs to be accepted by the city he has come to love, but finds himself forever a stranger in a strange land. Chris McCann, writing for PopMatters, called the book "anti-noir," because, unlike the solitary gumshoes of the hard-boiled genre, the book "[eschews] the taciturn, solitary detective for a man whose only desire is to connect."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 15, 1992, Peter Robertson, review of Incinerator, p. 913; July, 1993, Emily Melton, review of The Man with No Time, p. 1949; March 15, 1995, George Needham, review of The Bone Polisher, p. 1312; June 1, 2007, Frank Sennett, review of A Nail through the Heart, p. 46.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2007, review of A Nail through the Heart.

Library Journal, May 1, 1989, review of The Four Last Things, p. 102; May 1, 1989, Rex E. Klett, review of The Four Last Things, p. 102; March 1, 1990, Rex E. Klett, review of Everything but the Squeal, p. 119; January, 1991, Rex E. Klett, review of Skin Deep, p. 158; February 1, 1992, Rex E. Klett, review of Incinerator, p. 129.

Publishers Weekly, May 5, 1989, Sybil Steinberg, review of The Four Last Things, p. 69; February 9, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Everything but the Squeal, p. 48; February 15, 1991, Sybil Steinberg, review of Skin Deep, p. 78; December 20, 1991, review of Incinerator, p. 68; January 18, 1993, review of Incinerator, p. 466; May 24, 1993, review of The Man with No Time, p. 72; March 6, 1995, review of The Bone Polisher, p. 62; May 28, 2007, review of A Nail through the Heart, p. 37.

Tribune Books, April 7, 1991, review of Skin Deep, p. 6; July 4, 1993, review of The Man with No Time, p. 5.

Wall Street Journal, August 10, 1989, Pam Lambert, review of The Four Last Things, p. 12; August 10, 1989, Pam Lambert, review of The Four Last Things, p. 12; May 11, 1990, Tom Nolan, review of Everything but the Squeal, p. 11.