Exciting New Novel

[+ Lucky]

John Burdett, the author of the fascinating novel Bangkok 8 has just published a sequel called Bangkok Tattoo. Both novels center around Thailand and the interplay of the western lifestyle with the eastern. The main character is a Thai policeman who is the son of a prostitute and an American soldier. The books take you into the world of Thai prostitution, gambling, and, of course, the netherworld of corruption.

 

Burdett writes very well and the characters come alive. He has a knack for creating some unusual people and scenarios. When I finished each one, I had the feeling of just having had a nice visit to intriguing Thailand. Bangkok 8 is the one to start with.

[+ Axiom2001]

Since I have rebooked my Thailalnd trip for December 15 until the middle of January 2006, I decided to order both of your recommendations. By the time of my trip, I should have read them and begun to be steeped in the "Land of Smiles" again!

 

Thanks, Lucky! :9 :-) :9

[+ Lucky]

You will now have the advantage of going to Thailand at what I think is the best time of year for good weather plus you will never look the same at the cops and the army! Enjoy the books.

[FourAces]

Are these straight or gay based novels?

 

RT

[+ Lucky]

They are straight...to the heart! You will fall in love with Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the cop. In the second novel, his gorgeous 18 year old partner wants to be a katoey. Sonchai is very supportive.

Gay characters and themes are not uncommon in these books, but the main guys are heteros...

[+ Axiom2001]

I purchased both books through BooksMillions.com (at a discount) and am presently reading Bangkok 8 and wholly agree with your assessment and position. Again, thanks for apprising us members of these two sources. The insight which B8 provides is much helpful to this reader! :-) :-) :-)

[Guest rampo]

A handful of recent Washington Post articles by and about Mr. Burdett (free registration may be required):

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/26/AR2005052601309.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/26/AR2005052601295.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201461_pf.html

 

I've recommended Bangkok 8 to many people, all of whom enjoyed the book. The biggest fault I found was that the "mystery" aspect of the book was rather lame. But Mr. Burdett does write very well and captures the Thai bar scene and its mindset better than any other book that I've read written by a westerner.

[+ Lucky]

John Burdett's newest book, Bangkok Haunts, continues the saga of our favorite Bangkok cop, but this one is a whole lot darker than the first two. I still liked it, but it portrays a slice of Thailand I hope never to see!

[Guest rampo]

From Variety: "Millennium Films has optioned 'Bangkok 8,' the first in a three-book bestselling mystery series by John Burdett. 'V For Vendetta' helmer James McTeigue is attached to direct."

[+ Lucky]

RE: Reviewed: Bangkok Haunts

 

Today's New York Times takes a look at John Burdett's newest novel, Bangkok haunts. Guess what? They like it too!

Books of the Times

Spicy, Saucy, Subtle, Seasoned: A Thai Meal of Mystery

 

 

By CLAUDIA LA ROCCO

Published: July 5, 2007

With “Bangkok Haunts” John Burdett has now written three delicious detective yarns set in Bangkok’s underbelly, and the only thing that seems more far-fetched than some of his plots is that Hollywood has yet to put any of them on the screen.

 

BANGKOK HAUNTS

 

By John Burdett

 

305 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $24.95.

Granted, Sonchai Jitpleecheep doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like, say, James Bond. But Mr. Burdett’s half-Thai, half-farang (Thai for Westerners) Buddhist cop hero is made for Hollywood. Bring on the wide-angle shots of Bangkok street chaos and the broody, shadowed silhouettes in houses of ill repute. And how about the Kalashnikov-toting monk, the pre-op transsexual assistant, the beautiful, demonic hooker and the grisly plot twist that will have you reconsidering those cuddly nature-show portrayals of elephants?

 

No self-respecting thriller novelist dispenses with the treasured clichés of the genre. It’s what the writer does with them that counts, and Mr. Burdett doles his out with a witty, idiosyncratic flair, indulging readers’ taste for the exotic, even as he lets them smile knowingly at others’ less-enlightened tastes. “Right, farang?” as Sonchai would say.

 

The previous novel in the series, “Bangkok Tattoo,” had Sonchai and his wonderfully corrupt boss, Colonel Vikorn, dipping their toes in geopolitics, as Mr. Burdett introduced a half-baked Al Qaeda plotline; even the author didn’t seem to buy into his own invention. Thankfully, “Bangkok Haunts” avoids such nonsense, plunging back into the loopy, superstitious chaos of urban Thailand.

 

As another messy tangle of interconnected plots unravels, without anybody paying it undue attention, Mr. Burdett saves his best moments for on-the-fly details that do more than supply the requisite colorful detail, hinting at a writer with a generous affection for Thai culture. He does much better with Thais than Westerners, especially Americans, and especially the love-starved, high-strung F.B.I. agent Kimberley Jones, a hopelessly irritating stock character in need of a kill-off if ever there was one.

 

Describing the Bangkok driving experience, which seems to be equal parts gridlock and hail-Mary maneuvers at insane speeds, Sonchai explains: “I should mention that there are two ways of avoiding death on our roads: pop pong and pop gun. Pop gun signifies the usual dreary ineffective stuff like wearing a seatbelt and not driving too fast; we generally prefer pop pong, with its inviolable spiritual protection. Done properly, pop pong not only protects your life, it can also deal out severe punishments to those who threaten it.”

 

Mr. Burdett also offers drool-inducing descriptions of the local cuisine (this is the kind of book you can imagine Anthony Bourdain taking with him on one of his culinary globe trots for the Discovery Channel), riffs on Buddhism (which was “never designed to build caring communities or create social welfare programs”) and primers on the sex-change trends among his countrymen: “In a nutshell, the ancient system, by which a Thai man has to worry about Everything while his Thai wife gets to live on a more hospitable planet at his expense, may be breaking down.”

 

Of course the vaunted state of wedded bliss doesn’t often figure into Mr. Burdett’s plot twists. It’s true Sonchai is now married to Chanya, the main prostitute in “Bangkok Tattoo,” a somewhat troubling development for the hero of a detective series, especially when a returning love interest turns him into an adulterer. But Mr. Burdett neatly sidesteps this potential character blemish through magical means.

 

Is it technically adultery when the woman involved is a powerful, malevolent spirit who bends all men to her will? No, it’s a win-win situation, in which readers get their dose of tortured, it-can’t-end-well-for-them sex scenes, and Sonchai gets to come out smelling like a rose.

 

But even if we have to deal with the now-wholesome Chanya (pregnant, no less) until Mr. Burdett can figure out how to fix that narrative faux pas and render his hero footloose again, there are plenty of unreformed characters to distract.

 

There’s Sonchai’s mother, for example, a retired prostitute now running the Old Man’s Club. Another bright spot is Yammy, a Japanese artiste whiling away his time shooting highbrow skin flicks until he can work his way deep enough into the drug trade to secure financing for a real art-house film. As he writes in one of his increasingly desperate text messages to Sonchai: “I’ve found a mule so I won’t have to carry myself. Please talk to the Colonel. I don’t think I can take much more of this. I must practice my art.”

 

But my deepest affections are reserved for Vikorn, with his larcenous schemes and his smirks “of undiluted triumphalism,” and Lek, the transsexual in process. Even though “the more he takes of the estrogen, the less defense he possesses against idle flattery,” Lek remains a dedicated assistant. Sauntering up to his boss’s desk one afternoon, he “has something of the weary professional about him,” despite long hair, a hint of rouge on his cheeks and a “yaa dum aromatherapy inhaler” stuck in one nostril.

 

“ ‘I’ve been chasing leads all day,’ he explains, switching nostrils, ‘and it’s hot and stinky.’ ”

 

There are fine points to be quibbled over if one wants to be a bore but, really, what more can you ask from summer reading than passages such as this? “Bangkok Haunts” is a book to be gobbled up at top speed, preferably while wearing sunglasses and drinking through a twisty straw. The inhaler is optional.

[+ Lucky]

More about John Burdett as he prepares his fourth Bangkok novel in today's NY Times Arts section:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/books/25burd.html?ref=arts

[buckguy]

I liked "Bangkok 8" although I thought it dealt with too many stereotypes, but "Bangkok Tattoo" betrays Burdett's general ignorance of anything outside of Patpong or Soi Cowboy, as well as his one dimensional view of Americans. The story is grafted on something that happens every few years--after a joint US-Thai military maneuver, some GI winds up dead in cheap hotel, divey bar or the like. I used to know one of the people who had to mop up these situations. Burdett takes this scenario, shifts it to the CIA and adds an update of the "Air America" scandals regarding the opium trade in Laos during the Vietnam War. He comes up with some ludicrous characters that are sort of Graham Greene's Quiet American with Forest Gump and the whole thing goes down hill from there. He also makes the Northeast (where bar girls that serve foreigners usually come from) sound like the classic brothel supplying villages in the Upper North. The women from the Northeast enter the business in a far different way (they are probably ostarcized at home for what they do) and tend to have much weaker ties to their home. Anyway--the book just perpetuates a lot of misinformation about Thailand.

 

Burdett also doesn't know anything about restaurants in Washington, DC (which also turns up in the book; he talks about a Thai restaurant in Adams-Morgan with Thai clientele--nothing of the kind exists in that neighborhood; you have to go to unglamorous suburbs for that), but that's another matter.

[kjun]

He is writing a novel. Not a travel guide.

 

the Cajun

[buckguy]

Unfortunately, if one knows a place and the author obviously doesn't--it creates a credibility problem and a big distraction, esp. when the non-travelogue stuff is thrown together as is the case here. Also, fiction readers, regardless of education, get their impressions of people and places from fiction and fiction does a lot to perpetuate stereotypes. The best fiction writers really do know their subjects and great works fiction like this endure (the impressions of Asia by George Orwell and W. Somerset Maugham have a certain resonance even now; Paul Theroux is just devastating when it comes to expats, NGO workers, missionaries, locals and the whole foreigner milieu whether he writes fiction or non-fiction. On this trip, I also read a mystery set in DC and New England that took place partly in academia--I'm familiar with all those places; the book was true to its settings, but sucked for reasons of plot and prose---at least the people and places seemed real which kept me from casting it aside before the ending.

 

Thailand, esp. Bangkok, has been the source material for any number of wretched fiction and non-fiction books dealing in some way with sex work. I've come to the conclusion that it's too easy for people to spend time there and to not penetrate the country beyond some expat ghetto, which is a shame because there's a very rich world beyond all that. On the non-fiction side, there are several academic studies of female sex work for sale in the English language book stores written by women, as grad students, who obviously never spoke to a sex worker. The expat fiction, which has sprouted since the mid-90s, typically is just amateurish.

[eeyore]

Just finished Bangkok 8 and thoroughly enjoyed it. It made for great airplane/airport and bedtime reading. Thanks for recommending it. I'm looking forward to reading the two sequels.

[eeyore]

I finished the second novel in the John Burdett Bangkok trilogy, 'Bangkok Tatoo', and enjoyed it even more than his first novel. I'm going to order 'Bangkok Haunts' soon. Maybe someday I'll get to Thailand. Thanks for recommending these novels.

[+ Lucky]

eeyore, I am glad that you are enjoying the books. For me, Bangkok 8 was the best, then Bangkok Haunts.

I just read another Bangkok book that I liked, The Risk of Infidelity Index, by Christopher Moore. Nothing gay about it, except for some ladyboys, but a fun read for those who like Bangkok.

[kjun]

Buckguy, I'm about half way through "Tatoo"I've got to say that I agree that it is not nearly as good as "8". He is jammed on beating up, we, of the farang persuasion and appears obsessed with pointing out how ignorant and immoral Western people are. This was somewhat irritating to me.

 

the Cajun

[eeyore]

>eeyore, I am glad that you are enjoying the books. For me,

>Bangkok 8 was the best, then Bangkok Haunts.

>I just read another Bangkok book that I liked, The Risk of

>Infidelity Index, by Christopher Moore. Nothing gay about it,

>except for some ladyboys, but a fun read for those who like

>Bangkok.

 

Thanks for the additional recommendation. The folks at Amazon insisted that I should not buy one without the other, so I broke down and clicked on the 'add both to cart' button.