A great read to stash away in your backpack alongside your Loney Planet guidebook. A short, face-paced thriller of a slacker whose life suddenly gets turned inside out as he finds himself in exotic locales with unforseen dangers at every turn. Leaves you waiting for the next one in what one hopes may be a series.

Having read Ports of Hell, I can see why writers like Herbert Huncke and Alexander Trocchi -- and probably Genet and Celine too -- must appeal to Johnny Strike. A real sense of lived experience informs and enriches his writing. William Burroughs wrote a blurb for this book stating that it draws a map of real places -- which is incredible, because these are some far-out places -- and yet you get the sense that Burroughs was right. Strike's stuff leaves you with the impression that, however incredible these places may have been, he went there and came back to tell the tale.