New York Times [27th November 2005]

LAST week, Nepal’s Maoist rebels and a coalition of seven opposition parties agreed on a program to try to end direct rule by King Gyanendra. The accord was the latest twist in this tiny Himalayan kingdom’s decade-long civil war, which took a bizarre turn almost five years ago: on June 1, 2001, the hard-drinking, drug-abusing crown prince, Dipendra, who had been told by his parents that he had to choose between the kingdom he expected to inherit and the woman he loved, responded by murdering nine of the royal household, including his parents, before taking his own life.
Questions and conspiracy theories abound, with a focus on the two factions that benefited from the catastrophe: the faction led by Dipendra’s uncle Gyanendra, who inherited the crown, and the one led by the Maoists.
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Tripping
A young reporter stumbles into Bangkok drug-trafficking.

Reviewed by John Burdett
Sunday, November 6, 2005

In 2002, at the astonishing age of 17, Nick McDonell wrote a fine novel about Manhattan called Twelve, which became an international bestseller and was highly praised for its mastery of teen-talk (comparisons with Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye were made). I’m prepared to bet that once the euphoria faded, McDonell became the victim of a form of panic that follows every such triumph: Can I do it again, or was it just a fluke? Shrewdly, he realized that his gift was all about the imaginative recreation of contemporary urban experience, but he didn’t want to repeat himself; in other words, he needed another New York.
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