Book Review: In a Country With No Name

Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

Catch Me If You Can meets The Quiet American—a spy thriller filtered through a backpacker’s sunburn and a shot of Red Bull

Bert Mars is a sharp-tongued English teacher chasing big dreams in a small corner of Southeast Asia. What starts as a side hustle at a local TV station quickly pulls him into the orbit of powerful figures like Chiang, a larger-than-life tycoon, and Mike, a charming ex-marine with secrets of his own. Along the way, Bert navigates tangled romances, bureaucratic close calls, and a cast of fellow expats, each more jaded than the last.

In a Country with No Name is a story about ambition, misadventure, and the strange allure of a place where the rules are bendable, the stakes are murky, and survival might just depend on how fast you can run (or talk) your way out.

There’s something delightfully rogue about In a Country with No Name. This postmodern expat noir doesn’t so much grip you as it does jostle you along for the ride. The first in the Bert Mars series offers up a cocktail of bureaucratic chaos, casual espionage, and the unkillable optimism of a young Westerner who thinks rules are more suggestion than structure.

Ron Morris crafts his narrator, Bert Mars, as a kind of morally flexible Ferris Bueller dropped into a Graham Greene fever dream. The prose is light, fast, and often quippy. “I was pure ambition,” Bert tells us early on, “and that’s what Asia was—a place where anything was possible, and we were all going to be tycoons.” It’s the kind of line that sells you on the character’s delusion and charms you anyway.

And charm it does. While the writing occasionally leans on its momentum over its mechanics, the story barrels forward with the kinetic energy of someone perpetually running from visa trouble, and maybe himself. The pace is brisk, the stakes steadily escalate, and the tone stays tongue-in-cheek even as the plot brushes up against government coups and classified surveillance.

The worldbuilding, however, is quite light. You get the heat and the grime, the bustle and the street noodles, but a more immersive dive into the unnamed country’s culture and politics is missing behind the story’s darker turns. Readers are more tourist than resident in this world.

Still, there’s something refreshing about a book that doesn’t posture. It’s not trying to be literary; it’s trying to entertain, and it does. Especially when the story veers into spy thriller territory and suddenly you’re asking yourself, “Wait… was that a directed energy weapon?” The fact that it’s based on true events only adds to the strange, compelling texture of the novel.

Bert’s first-person narration keeps things brisk and full of bite, even when he’s confessing, dodging authority, or accidentally stumbling into international intrigue. “I would never interfere,” he says with the wide-eyed innocence of a man clearly about to interfere. It’s hard not to root for him, even when you suspect he might be the chaos he’s trying to escape.

Morris doesn’t try to impress with overwrought prose or meticulous detail. Instead, he invites you into the haze and hustle of Southeast Asia and lets the chaos speak for itself. In a Country with No Name is a fast, fun, and slightly feverish read that thrives on its unpredictability. It’s great for fans of fast-paced travel thrillers, morally ambiguous protagonists, and stories of accidental espionage. This is the kind of book you devour in a hammock and then recommend with a grin and a warning: “This is one wild ride.”

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