John Burdett

John Burdett's Bangkok Tattoo continues with the tales of the Eurasian Thai detective who shall go by the name Sonchai (all Thai names seem to require a minimum of 20 letters). His mom's whorehouse for elderly Western men started off with a bang but then ran into some troubles I don't recall. Still operational, it is somewhat more traditional than intended. Sonchai still runs it while hanging on to his job as a Bangkok policeman, but then routine duties are not what these books are about, and plenty of non-routines events enliven the overall narrative.
 
We get a definite love interest, this time, and a suggestion that she will be with us in the next novel, too (Bangkok Haunts). In general, our education regarding the business of sex continues, and we learn a great deal.
 
There is a bit on local politics, as the fundamental story line involves a kind of war between the district chief police official (Sonchai's boss) and an Army general. Both are totally gangsters, and use their formidable resources to run drug-running businesses and anything else from which dollars or baht can be earned.
 
And, as always, the story is told by Sonchai from his Buddhist perspective. One might say his particularly Asian Buddhist perspective, but then Buddhism is an Asian religion, so the only curious thing is that the author is a Brit.
 
"Why am I still here?...Same reason the other guys couldn't go back. All over Southeast Asia there are American men who never go home. We simply can't. Because when we look into the eyees of your people, we see something, call it what you like. Soul? The human mind before fragmentation? Something sacred we farang habitually amputate like tonsils because we don't understand its function? Maybe it's your damned Buddhism. But we see something. Now tell me this, Detective. When you look into the eyes of farang, what do you see?
 
When I fail to reply, he sniggers. "Yeah, that's what I thought."
 
The idea for the fundamental story line might have been taken from the 1996 film The Pillow Book.

The Godfather of Kathmandu suggests at least two aspects of this latest novel by John Burdett. 'godfather' is often used to mean a mafia sort of person, and in this novel it refers to a very unusual drug supplier in Nepal. 'Kathmandu' is the capital of Nepal, and in addition to being a staging area for climbs of Mt Everest and surrounding peaks, is a popular destination for young people seeing either the spiritual aura of South Asian culture or its drugs.

 

Burdett shows us that his (and the home of his detective character, Sonchai Jitpleecheep) Bangkok is also culturally connected with Nepal, as our hero flies back and forth between South Asia and Southeast Asia. He seldom mentions which language our hero is speaking, but we know he speaks English, so perhaps that is something of a lingua franca in the area.

 

Nepal is, evidently, home to many displaced Tibetans, who are also well known in neighboring India. Some of our primary characters are Tibetan, so we get quite a tour even beyond Bangkok.

 

Tragedy has struck our hero even before our book starts, and I will not disclose its nature. It is truly devastating, and has pushed our hero even further toward coping through drug use than is his normal inclination. In fact, more than once while reading the novel the phrase "drug-addled" entered my mind. Always highly spiritual, Detective Jitpleecheep marches closer to nirvana choosing, it would seem, deliberately not to cross over. Just yet.

 

Thailand is just as corrupt as in previous books, and this one appears to use the recent death of the American actor David Carradine (in Bangkok) as its model for the murdered man (although happening in June 2009 would seem to be after Burdett would have begun the book).

 

Once again, we see lots of Thailand and its people (and its visitors), but this time a bit of Nepal, too. I can't imagine a more riveting travel guide.

 

--Michael Broschat, Jan 2010