Fieldwork

I really wanted to read Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski as soon as I read about it when it was short-listed for the National Book Award last year.  It is a fascinating murder story set in the hill tribe region of Northern Thailand near Chang Mai, a place that I have visited several times in the past.  It concerns the murder of a missionary named David Walker by an anthropologist who had gone native so to speak.  But it is more than a mystery story, it is also a fictionalized memoir, and a well-researched and fictionalized account of the Dyalo tribe based on the real life Lisu tribe of Northern Thailand.  Some of the missionary Walker family history was a bit of a struggle for me to get to get through, but generally speaking it was exotic and smart.  The author knows a lot about Thailand, anthropology, and missionaries that show through in the well-paced mystery that is at the center of the novel.