Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett

Sonchai Jitplecheep, one of the most sympathetic and complex police detectives in present day crime fiction, returns for a third round of heartache and murder in Bangkok Haunts. First there was a dead US Army officer inside a locked vehicle teeming with snakes. Then there was the brutal disembowling and castration of a lonely CIA agent in a rented hotel room. This time, Burdett has upped the stakes (and the brutality) by starting his novel off on the very first page with depictions of the cruelest violence imaginable.

Damrong, prostitute turned porn starlet, is murdered on screen by her costar during an erotic film shoot. Having been at one time, very briefly, one of her lovers, Sonchai is horrified to find footage of the act sent to him anonymously on an unmarked DVD. Along with friend and occasional partner Kimberly Jones of the FBI, Sonchai sets out to find out who killed Damrong and just how far the web of perversion reaches.

Like any other Burdett novel, Bangkok Haunts teems with violence, sexual depravity and Buddhist observation. Just as in the novels that came before, what should be a fairly easy case to solve (following the money trail is never too difficult in Sonchai’s world) becomes more and more complex by the page, until readers are overloaded with subplots, double-crosses, broken hearts and motives so imaginative and disturbing that in another author’s care would come across as incredibly hokey. Like any other Burdett novel, the twisting plot and improbable complications work like a charm, only this time around the dealings are way more spiritual (some would even say magical) than they were before.

Half incredibly violent crime noir, half exotic pornography, Bangkok Haunts almost left me wishing I had a ghost creeping up on my bed at night. Almost.

The fourth Sonchai Jitpleecheep novel, The Godfather of Kathmandu, came out two days ago, and already it’s at the top of my must-read list. Burdett is an exceptionally adept storyteller, and has an amazing talent for creating meaningfulness out of depravity.

8/10

#1 of 2009: Bangkok 8 by John Burdett

An American Army sergeant in Bangkok is found under a bridge in a luxury car with its handles forced shut, the interior of the vehicle teeming with angry cobras. On the man’s head coils an equally angry python, bound and determined to swallow him whole. Two police officers, devout Buddhists and perhaps the only two non-corrupt cops in the Royal Thai Police Force, have been assigned to tail this man for reasons unknown, and when he slips away for a half hour he winds up dead.

Who killed William Bradley, and why? If you follow the pattern of other crime novels, the pages of this book should be devoted to finding the answers to these two questions.

Set in Bangkok, however, against the backdrop of two teeming, illegal industries, the most important question becomes “Who are all these people, and why do they live the way they do?” Prostitution and drugs abound, intertwined with Buddhist philosophy, as a half-Thai, half-American near-saint of a cop ponders the case and questions both himself and the people around him.

Call me stupid, but I’m still not sure why this is called Bangkok 8. Perhaps as a reference to the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhist scripture, I don’t know [It's a reference to the Royal Thai Police district Sonchai works in. Ignore me, I'm dense. - JB ]. What I do know is that this is one damn fine novel, a crime novel for sure but a bit apart from what classifies as detective fiction. I would probably refer to it as a character study steeped in illegal activity, or a character study because of illegal activity. Burdett’s Thailand seems to be fueled by it, though in a way that makes everyone both culpable and blameless at the same time. It’s all for the better of society, right? The redistribution of Western wealth into the East? And who doesn’t like to have a good time?

When the last page is flipped, two points will have been made. First, there is no black and white in Thailand, only shades of grey. Everyone is corrupt, even if only a little. And the second point?

Everyone is a whore.


5/5

#61 of 2008 - The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi

One of the greatest things about mystery novels, in addition to the prospect of solving a case before the solution is revealed on the page, is the amount of emotional depth that can be lent to the characters. Nothing brings out familiarity and camaraderie between an author and their audience like conflict and mortal danger, and crime novels have both in spades.

Crime is also an incredible vehicle for social observance. Reading foreign mysteries are the best way, aside from spending large sums of money at your local travel agent’s office, to get a feel for a country’s many overlapping societal layers. You have criminals, law officers, academics, local businesspeople, religious officials and many others weaving their way in and out of the narrative, sometimes the focus of a chapter and sometimes the colorful background.

This is a book written for the Japanese by a young Japanese writer. Both the novel’s date of birth and setting are 1947, just after the country’s defeat in World War II. Though there is little outright hostility directed towards the Western occupiers, there is a pronounced sentiment of loss, regret and bewilderment that permeates the narrative as thick as beef and potato stew. These people are survivors; ordinary citizens who’ve been conscripted and sent to hell only to return to a half-destroyed city, or people who never left and witnessed the air raids firsthand. Nobody in this story is untouched, innocent or naïve. Criminal or not, they’re all damaged in one way or another.

The crime appears early in the novel. A temptingly beautiful yet troubled young woman is brutally murdered, her torso and parts of her arms and legs carted away. Her head and the remaining portions of her arms and legs are found in a locked bathroom with the faucet still running, washing all the blood down a drain in the floor. Her home has been ransacked and her belongings stolen. Even the tattoos that adorned her body are gone, every bit of her that was inked having disappeared. From here we are led through twists and turns, given information about the then-prohibited Japanese tattooing underworld, in the hopes of finding this woman’s killer. Instead, what we find are more bodies and a deepening sense of dread as the case goes from very hot to tepid to cold.

When the killer, the killer’s motives and the methods employed are finally revealed at the end, the solution is obvious enough to cause the reader to nod and say, “Yes, that makes perfect sense now!” But nothing is so obvious that it would make the reader feel stupid.

This is Takagi Akimitsu’s first novel, written before he was 30, and the first to be published in English by SOHO. Two others, The Informer and Honeymoon to Nowhere, have been published in the years since The Tattoo Murder Case’s debut.


5/5