Bangkok Tattoo: A Royal Thai Detective Novel (2)

Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is back. The hero of Burdett's Bangkok 8 is once again called upon to use his wits and intuition to solve a baffling series of murders in Bangkok. While working at The Old Man's Club, Sonchai's mother's brothel, Chanya, the club's highest earner, is implicated in the murder of a CIA officer. Soon, an attempted cover-up unravels and conflict with the country's Muslim south is too possible. More CIA officers arrive, Sonchai reads Chanya's journal kept during her years in America, and a Japanese tattoo artist on the lam from the Japanese mafia appears. While trying to decipher the meaning behind it all, Sonchai walks a delicate balance between his Buddhist detachment and his ambition to rise in the police force. Burdett paints a vivid and lurid picture of life in Bangkok. Westerners in general and Americans in particular are depicted as louts at best and schizophrenic at worst. In Burdett's world, Americans have lost theirs souls by embracing the religion known as consumerism, where nothing matters but the continued accumulation of material possessions. In the meantime, they have sacrificed the attainment of anything more meaningful. At one point, Sonchai marvels at an act of extreme benevolence made by Chanya and rather plaintively says that she is a better Buddhist than he is. Americans, on the other hand, don't know who they are. They're a mass of psychotic tendencies. They don't know how to relax. They can't enjoy life because they're too busy pursuing a meaningless consumerist lifestyle, where much is bought but nothing is gained. By contrast, Thais are laid back. They, too, embody contradictions but do so willingly. By making conscious decisions about their lives, they can mitigate the karma that attaches to them by their wrong decisions. Something Americans are unable to do because they are unable to admit that they might be wrong about anything. It's a fascinating look at the seamier side of Thai life. As one who is visiting Thailand for the first time later this summer, I am eager to see this vital and thriving city. Burdett notes in a short postscript to his novel that most visitors to Bangkok have a wonderful vacation and never encounter the sex trade, drugs, or police corruption. That's a nice reassurance. Bangkok Tattoo is a well-written, intricately plotted mystery, and it offers a bit more to the discerning reader. The end of the story nicely sets up the next installment. I hope that Burdett doesn't keep us waiting too long.

I first read about this detective in "Bangkok 8" and was eager to read "Bangkog Tattoo". Even more surprising and pleasing! The detective is the head pimp in a brothel whose manager is his mother and silent partner the local police chief, his boss. The detective is a devout Buddhist. The detective is in love with the brothel's number one call girl whose profits have made her the hero of her home village. The detective sees who you were in your past lives. Confused yet? It all hangs together positive and upbeat and pokes thoughtful fun at "western" ways and attitudes. A Hollywood starlet forces a factory to release underage kids as workers... so the parents hire them out as sex slaves instead. I recommend it because it's different, it's entertaining, it's thought-provoking, and it encourages us "Farang" westerners to lighten up a little in our Puritanical ways...

Thrillers keep me up nights way into the wee hours of the morning. I just love reading away with the lights down low. There is nothing like a good chase scene or a quick and nasty shoot 'em up to get a girl's blood pumping and once you get that little adreniline rush in the middle of the night, you're good for a few more pages, till the next one and the next, right up till the end of the book. "Bangkok Tattoo" is like that. And not only is it an excellent thriller, but Mr. Burdett has thrown in oodles of stuff about Thailand, it's culture and it's people, but you hardly realize it, so engrossing is his story. You will marvel at how police work is done there and you will absolutely love the torn and conflicted Sonchai Jitpleecheep, he is a police detective to die for. "Bangkok Tattoo" gets five big stars from me and it deserves every one.

As spicy as a four-pepper pot of Pad Thai, BANGKOK 8 whetted our palates for a second course. Author John Burdett serves it up in BANGKOK TATTOO with asbestos mitts, brim filled with culturally diverse, eclectic and exciting characters. His Buddhist monk cum Bangkok police detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, is the singularly most complex and exotic police detective to be found in current noir detective fiction. In his first highly acclaimed novel we are introduced to Sonchai, a troubled young detective under the tutelage of Police Colonel Vikorn, head of Bangkok's notorious Precinct 8. Sonchai is the half-breed son of a vanished American GI and one of Bangkok's most successful concubines. Now retired, she has the connections needed to allow her son entré to what she hopes will be a life away from the bitter streets of the Red Light district. These hopes are upended due to his familiarity with the business end of Bangkok's seamy sexual underworld. His Buddhist monastic training has rendered him incorruptible, but his upbringing has left him unblinkingly aware of the dark hazards that can befall those who ply the trade. In BANGKOK TATTOO he becomes inextricably entangled in a plot that involves the FBI, CIA, Muslim clerics, Al Qaeda operatives, and ghoulish figures of the Thai underworld. It seems that the love of his life, the beautiful Chanya, is a chief suspect in the grisly murder of a CIA agent, found dead in her room. Sonchai follows a trail of evidence that burrows into a feud between the Thai military, upper echelon police and international terrorist groups. Mere suicide bombings pale against the toll of the highly lucrative drug and sex trade, as always at the root of the strife. Burdett creates a vivid sense of place and offers a cast of colorful villains and anti-heroes that favorably compare to the worlds of James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly. His writing is literary in style, reflective and philosophical in nature, yet filled with action and suspense often delivered with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Bring on the third course, Mr. Burdett. We're ready with a six-pack of Singha beer in the cooler. --- Reviewed by Roz Shea

"Cynical" seems a wan description of the world of Sonchai Jitpleecheep. Many readers will have a hard time with Sonchai, who advocates prostitution as a worthwhile way for poor Thai girls to get rich quick, and who doesn't bother to conceal his utter contempt for post-911 America and Americans. If you hold your Western morality dearly, better skip this one. On the other hand, if you're up for a stylish, sexy, rollicking good read with oodles and oodles of plot, dripping with exotica of every description, then welcome to Sonchai's world. Sonchai's mom, an ex-hooker turned clubowner, and the ever-inventive Colonel Vikorn (with his limo blasting "Ride of the Valkyries" through its sound system at all times) are characters who will make you laugh out loud--that is, when you're not squirming over the moral dilemmas they pose (and then leap past, with the greatest of ease). You may think you've read it all on the moral ambiguity front, but Burdett takes all those wised-up detective stories and raises the stakes to another level entirely. When you find yourself rooting for a young male cop to be successful in his sex-change operation, you'll know Burdett has gotten into your head. It's a great ride! Enjoy!