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

#30 of 2009: Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett

Sonchai Jitpleecheep is back to narrate another heinous murder in Bangkok to an unnamed Western audience in Bangkok Tattoo, the second in John Burdett’s exotic crime fiction series.

This time, the top earner at The Old Man’s club (a prostitution joint owned by Sonchai’s mother Nong and his boss, Royal Thai Police Colonel Vikorn) has returned to the bar after taking a client back to his hotel room, her once silver dress now covered in blood. The john, an American CIA operative named Mitch Turner, has been castrated and nearly eviscerated atop his hotel bed. Whatever the reason for killing him, his murderer has gone to great lengths to harm him, leaving his severed penis on the bedside table in a position seemingly, considering the circumstances, oddly respectful.

Before retiring to an unoccupied room on the upstairs floor of the Old Man’s Club, Chanya admits she murdered Turner, shouting “I’ve done him in!” before stripping off her underwear and curling up with enough opium to render a woman her size blissfully stoned for hours on end.

Nothing in a Burdett novel is quite as simple as it initially seems. Vikorn concocts a fake statement to hold onto in case the CIA find out Turner has been murdered, a document that claims Chanya was sexually assaulted and killed the man in self defense. The victim’s identification is disposed of and the body scheduled to be cremated. The Old Man’s Club is finally seeing a profit and their star whore cannot be detained in prison. So it is in Sonchai’s world, where he is the only one who refuses bribes and desperately tries to keep in the Buddha's graces while the world around him falls apart.

Sonchai and Vikorn, however, soon find that they missed one crucial piece of physical evidence on the corpse. And so begins the unraveling of Vikorn’s little cover story.

The initial coverup barely scratches the surface of Bangkok Tattoo’s twisting plot, which despite all of its detailed intrigue takes a backseat to the inner lives of its core characters. Like its predecessor Bangkok 8, the second novel revolves around the lives and loves of several people, with healthy doses of Buddhism, Islam and Western culture clash blended into the narrative. Nothing is as it seems, and what should be a simple crime is anything but.

Also included in the novel are several subtle and not so subtle subplots that are either left entirely open for the third novel, Bangkok Haunts, or are tied up in such a tenuous way that readers will assume them to be primed for further exploration at a later time. Sonchai's American GI father is mentioned in passing, and Vikorn's rivalries with other crooked officials rise to the surface here and there, hinting at further exploration in other volumes.

Once again, Burdett has written a novel that is part detective fiction, part East vs. West comparison. There have been several negative reviews for Bangkok Tattoo, mostly by Western readers, claiming that the story is a hard slam against Western culture. This reviewer, though, feels that perhaps they should lighten up a bit. It’s fiction, and obviously exaggerated for the purposes of entertainment and for bolstering an already scandalous (and somewhat controversial, in our post-9/11 culture) plot. In most fiction, though, there is a grain of truth, and perhaps readers have a slight something to gain by taking the story in with an open mind and a desire for a damn good murder story. Behind Sonchai’s “You’re deprived of X because of your culture, farang" lecturing (which is entertaining and enlightening in an “I kind of see what you mean” sort of way) is a bloody, perverse and altogether engrossing story that deserves to be read cover to cover.

5/5

Burdett’s fourth novel in the series, The Godfather of Kathmandu, hits stores in hardcover on January 12th.