Bangkok Tattoo
John Burdett
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 1400040450

The inimitable Royal Thai Police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep returns to solve the murder of an ugly foreigner.

We return to District 8 -- first explored in Bangkok 8 -- to the underworld where a dramatically mutilated dead body of a farang is found in his hotel room. It's bad: he was CIA. It gets worse: the murderer appears to be Chanya -— a tough, sweet working girl who's the highest earner at The Old Man's Club, jointly owned by Sonchai's mother & his revered & powerful boss & mentor, Police Colonel Vikorn.

Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves Al Qaeda & Thailand's porous southern border where, since 9/11, the CIA has been an obviously covert presence. The truth, which is a strange & slithery thing in the Far East where farangi morals don't apply, will be harder to come by.

It will require Sonchai to find the delicate balance between his ambition & his Buddhism, while running the gamut of Bangkok's drug dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, worse military, & the pitfalls of his own melting heart (Chanya!) -- most of which he can handle. But even Sonchai is not prepared for what he discovers.

Smart & funny, & densely atmospheric, Bangkok Tattoo is a gripping tale of mystery, written in an intensely engaging & lyrical voice. Suspend your plodding farangi expectations, & come flow with Jitpleecheep's take on life, love, law & lechery.

Positively enchanting, weirdly engaging, sometimes shocking & always affecting, Bangkok Tattoo is a “whodunnit” with a difference: Buddhism in play in our modern streets of sin.

I can give Bangkok Tattoo no higher praise than it is a novel wherein I often forgot it was a thriller, & a tale I was sorry to see end which, given its Buddhist point of view, didn't...

More from John Burdett:
The Last Six Million Seconds: A Thriller
A Personal History of Thirst
(08/14/05)

Rebecca