Jayne Keeney is a fiesty thirty-something Aussie who has been living in Bangkok for many years. She has been hired to investigate the alleged suicide of a young Australian woman in a seedy Thai coastal town. But Maryanne Delbeck's death is not the only mystery awaiting Jayne among Pattaya's neon signs and go-go bars. While working undercover at the orphanage where Maryanne volunteered, Jayne discovers something far more sinister.

Now her life is in danger, her case is still unsolved and she barely has time for dinner with her handsome new love interest, Rajiv. With love and death both circling, Jayne now has two cases to crack - and very little time to do it.

The Half-Child is not your standard crime novel; Jayne Keeney is not your everyday detective.

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The Half-Child by Angela Savage is the thought provoking sequel to Behind the Night Bazaar and features private investigator Jayne Keeney, a determined ex-pat Australian woman workingin Thailand.

The suicide of young Australian woman Maryanne Delbeck, fallen to her death from the fourteenth floor of a hotel rooftop in Pattaya was not all that it was set up to look like. At least, this is the belief of her father. Maryanne was working in Thailand as a part of the Young Christian Volunteers group and had been working in an orphanage at the time of her death. Her father believes she wasn’t the type to have committed suicide and has come to Jayne Keeney to ask her to find out the truth.

The orphanage at which Maryanne had been employed for the previous five months before her death prepared babies for adoption to international families. In order to find out the background behind Maryanne’s life as well as any possible reasons for her to commit suicide, Jayne organises to work there.

The revelations come quickly and the stories begin to reveal a series of heart-rending situations involving young Thai women and the struggles they have trying to provide for themselves and their respective children. What also becomes apparent is that there is some other motive at play for the head of the orphanage. Certainly, not everything is as it first appears.

One of the important parts of the enjoyment of the novel was the way we were given the opportunity to completely embrace the culture of Thailand. Angela Savage strips the entire psychological nuances of the country bare and soaks you in the thoughts and actions of the locals. This is achieved by the shifting of the focus of the narrative from Jayne to other principal characters important to the progress of the plot.

The important theme of the novel centres around international childhood adoption with suggestions that there can sometimes be more at play than the desire to match suitable couples up with prospective orphans.

The Half-Child is a superb crime novel that takes readers to an unfamiliar setting and presents a story that is, at times, quite disturbing. Mixed into the desperate plot is woven a blossoming romance that is tinged with a subtle humour that is quite delightful and offsets the more sobering moments very nicely.

The observations of Keeney as the insider who is also an outsider allows the reader to put themselves in her shoes as she experiences the sights and sounds with a hard-edged and almost stolid understanding.

This is a very worthwhile sequel to Behind the Night Bazaar and confirms the worthiness of the Ned Kelly Award nomination that the first novel earned. It is with no real surprise that The Half-Child has earned its own nomination for the 2011 Ned Kelly Award.