John Burdett once more takes the reader on a visit to Bangkok’s underbelly with the hero of his first novel BANGKOK 8. Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep knows the good the bad and the in-between of his district having been brought up by his whoring mother in Pat Pong, who now runs the Old Man’s Club under the aegis of Sonchai’s boss, the wisely venal Police Colonel Vikorn.
There are no innoceet bystanders in this novel and no one is really guilty either. Good is bad and bad is good depending on where you stand at the moment, which is why Sonchai can handle the alleged murder of a CIA agent by his mother’s #1 girl. Chanya is beautiful, courageous, and wild. Even covered in another man’s blood, Sonchai can’t help loving her.
The evidence points to another killer, but things will be simpler if Sonchai and Vikorn construct a story to insure Chanya doesn’t go behind bars, since she coins more money than all the other girls in the club.
Of course nothing is simple in the telling and the plot winds through Thai political intrigue, accusation of American impotence, Isaan superstition, love, betrayal, and international crime mixed with the threat of terrorism.
Burdett’s insight into themelange of faiths in Thailand; Muslim, Buddhist, spiritual, and western consumerism constructs a world, where what seems to be sin to the West is just a way of making ends meet for the poor who have no other way out of poverty than to have their children enter the web of drugs and prostitution fueled by sex-starved foreigners and power-mad Thais.
While not a perfect book (Burdett indulges himself with a long aside of Chanya’s past life in America. Must have heard this story on a bar or from a girlfriend. Sounds like lies, but then what is the truth?
BANGKOK TATTOO makes points with its sniping at Western morality and thai corruption. Hell, you can read about five people you know or else someone close to yourself and he does have a rasp of farang-Thai relationship, which makes this book a must-read for anyone involved with a Thai person.
One more thing, the book has a happy ending for most of the characters, but not all. Better that way, because happy endings are only for fairy tales or massage parlors on Soi 7.
Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Happier that way.
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