Christopher R. Cox

My name is Christopher R. Cox and I am a recovering journalist. After nearly 20 years as a staff feature reporter for daily newspapers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Lowell and Boston, Massachusetts, where I racked up numerous national and regional awards -- but little financial lucre -- I left the business in 2005 to embark on a full-time regimen of freelance writing, Larium, and Third World travel. Alas, the lucre still escapes me. In its stead I've been able to visit the back of beyond (East Timor, anyone?) for such glossies as Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Caribbean Travel & Life, Global Traveler, ESPN: The Magazine, DestinAsian and Reader’s Digest. My non-fiction efforts also include the critically acclaimed adventure-travel book, "Chasing the Dragon: Into the Heart of the Golden Triangle" (Henry Holt & Co., 1996; Owl Books, 1997), about Burma’s narco-warlords, and travels-from-hell (Cambodia Section) dispatches to two Lonely Planet anthologies, "Tales from Nowhere" (2006) and "By the Seat of My Pants" (2005). "A Good Death" (St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, 2013) is my first novel. One of the first rules of fiction is: Write about what you know. Having traveled to Southeast Asia nearly 40 times since 1991, I had a wealth of material to draw upon for the narrative, which begins in Bangkok, Thailand, skirts Kanchanaburi (site of the Bridge on the River Kwai)and runs through the kingdom's little-visited northeast Isan region before plunging into off-the-grid Laos. How undeveloped is the one-party Communist state wedged between Thailand and Vietnam? When I first visited in 1992, four digits were enough to handle the country's entire telephone system. Communications have since vastly improved, though Laos remains an enigma -- the perfect setting for the long-standing mystery at the heart of my story. Happy trails!