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Bangkok Haunts
Summary
Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo, returns in this blistering novel. Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok's District 8, but nothing like the snuff film he's just been sent anonymously. Furiously fast-paced and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts more than lives up to the smart and darkly funny originality of its predecessors.
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Reviews
Not sure if I just read a sex tourism guide, a mystery, or some basic male purience with a Buddhist cover story. Maybe it's cross-cultural training about Bangkok sex work and societal corruption practices. Maybe it's a ghost story. But whatever you want it to be, the book could offend most women I know.
The sex, however, is not panting, drippy sex--well, maybe for some it could be-- but more of a plot device.
I do not know if the religious rituals and mouthings rise above exoticism, or if the cultural details ring true, but I can judge the characters depicted in the book, or at least the dead, snuffed uber-prostitute who kicks off the mystery. The author creates her as a new version dragon lady, trapping men in her hot little lap. I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to let her slip by.
The sex, however, is not panting, drippy sex--well, maybe for some it could be-- but more of a plot device.
I do not know if the religious rituals and mouthings rise above exoticism, or if the cultural details ring true, but I can judge the characters depicted in the book, or at least the dead, snuffed uber-prostitute who kicks off the mystery. The author creates her as a new version dragon lady, trapping men in her hot little lap. I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to let her slip by.
I like Burdett and enjoy his forays into the seady soul of Bangkok (and its environs). However, I think his _Bangkok 8_ is still the best. Definitely a book to get used or in the library if you're a fan like I am.
I have read the first 2 books in this series and loved them. They were odd, violent and non-pc. But they were also fun, and interesting, a raw look at the inside of Thailand.This book is really rather putrid in that there is a strong authorial sense of women hatred and blaming. There is some nasty characterization of all 'western women' and then extending that to the downfall of modern society. The implication being that subservient, down-trodden, exploited sex worker eastern women are really the way to be. If you are smart enough you can manipulate yourself into a better position, but never, never challenge a man, or pretend to be his equal.It comes across as a bitter, drunken diatribe by the author pushing whatever his problems are onto the western women in his life and all western women in general. It also overwhelms the story and makes you feel dirty while you are reading.
This is the third in the series, and I liked the first two better—maybe it was the snuff film aspect that made me like it less. Nonetheless, the constant blurring of Buddhism against prostitution and police and military corruption makes them all interesting. One thing thats bothered me, as an editor, in this series is that every book has at least one (to me glaring) error in a detail about a character. Nonetheless, I'm enjoying the series.
This book surprised me. Once I started I could not put it down. Burdett reached out to an ambitious breadth of topics - Thai culture, crime, suspense, witchcraft, snuff, prostitution, corruption, Buddhism, etc. - and pulled it all together. Sonchai is a great character and I look forward to now reading the rest of Burdett's works.
A great read, though perhaps a little longer than it needed to be. As usual, lots of gender bending, Buddhist mysticism, Thai and Khmer superstition, corruption, prostitution, pornography, etc., but with a great haunted twist at the end (which some may find a bit too much, but I bought into it). I think this third novel in the series was better than the third, about as good as the first.
This book surprised me. Once I started I could not put it down. Burdett reached out to an ambitious breadth of topics - Thai culture, crime, suspense, witchcraft, snuff, prostitution, corruption, Buddhism, etc. - and pulled it all together. Sonchai is a great character and I look forward to now reading the rest of Burdett's works.
Not nearly as good as his earlier books. I used to live in Bangkok and found that Burdett was close to the scene there, but there are so many basic mistakes in this book that it reads like someone who has been given a quick lesson on Thai language and culture and forgotten half of it. That aside, the plot is plodding. I'll keep reading to find out who the murderer(s?) is, but I won't be buying another in this series.
Once again John Burdett does the remarkable. He engages you completely in the mind of his devout Buddhist detective. We are drawn into these discussions, "Saved? There is nothing to save, my friend. You are talking like a Christian. You cannot cast yourself into the Unknowable in the hope that gesture will buy you salvation - you have to jump for the hell of it. In a nirvanic universe there can be no salvation because we are never really lost - or found. The choice is simply between nirvana and ignorance."This may be pedistrian to a Buddhist scholar but it affects our tough guy Sonchai Jitpleecheep, so it affects us.He also has a genuine affection for Thailand and even the farang men and women who become mesmerised by the prostitutes and the katoeys and the juxtaposition of deep spirtualism.While he acknowledges the sorted and ugly he exalts what is beyond the base drive of man toward woman (and woman toward man): oneness, beauty, affection, and connection with the infinite however brief.Our detective grows with each wound and in outing the bad guys he achieves a measure of peace.
A devout Buddhist, Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is considered to be one of the most moral and enlightened officers on the Bangkok Police Force. This is despite that his mother owns a brothel – which he helps manage; his expecting wife used to work for his mother; and his boss, Colonel Vikorn, is also a drug trafficker on the side – now branching out into pornography, a venture for which Sonchai is his point man. Jitpleecheep is investigating – with his highly perceptive katoey, or transgender, partner Lek, the murder of a prostitute named Damrong, killed in a snuff film. To further complicate things, Damrong previously worked for Jitpleecheep’s mother, when he fell in love with her – and was cruelly discarded by her. He runs up against some powerful people, and it’s not clear if the larcenous but powerful-himself Vikorn can protect him. Burdett builds upon characters introduced in his previous two novels in this series (Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo), and introduces some new ones – most of those don’t last. Lek and the totally corrupt Colonel Vikorn are favorites. He also continues to conjure some nice lines. The refrigerated drawers in the coroner’s office are “death’s filing cabinet.” In Jitpleecheep’s Buddhist philosophy “we are tiny figurines hanging from the charm bracelet of infinity. When these bodies wear out, we will migrate to others.”
To read John Burdett's Sonchai Jitpleecheep mysteries is to immerse yourself in the culture and mindset of Thailand. Westerners are not always understood or appreciated there, but if you're thick-skinned enough to withstand a bit of cultural bashing, you will be paid back in some marvelous reading.Sonchai is a police detective in Bangkok. Now living happily with Chanya, a former prostitute who's pregnant with his child, Sonchai at one time had had a passionate affair with a Cambodian beauty named Damrong. When he comes across a copy of a snuff film in which Damrong is murdered, he joins with American FBI agent Kimberley Jones to find the killer. While Sonchai's superior, Colonel Vikorn, has his detective set up a porn film business, the list of suspects in Damrong's murder grows to include a banker, a teacher, a Buddhist, and an exclusive men's club called the Parthenon.Once again-- as with the previous two books in the series-- I was immersed in the culture of Thailand, which is fascinating and so different from my own. I have to admit that one of the reasons why I enjoy these books so much is because I have the chance to see my own culture through the eyes of others.I enjoyed the convoluted plot, the further machinations of the wily Colonel Vikorn, and the glimpse across the border into Cambodia. Ultimately, however, the book fell flat for me because of the murder victim, Damrong. I felt only great indifference toward her, which really dampened my enjoyment of the book.Although this book wasn't exactly my cup of tea, your mileage could definitely vary-- and the first two books in the series, Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo are both superb. The fourth book in the series, The Godfather of Kathmandu, will be released in January, 2010, and I'm looking forward to reading it.There are many mystery series based in other countries. Usually the setting only serves to provide a whiff of the exotic, without nudging the reader fully into another culture. John Burdett's Thailand not only provides an exotic setting, the reader is dragged out of his comfortable chair and out into the streets of Bangkok-- out into a world where the people have different customs, a different religion, and an entirely different way of seeing the world. John Burdett takes the reader out of his comfort zone and makes him think about more than just whodunit, and I like that.
It's not as good as Bangkok 8 - in fact, it's a lot more of the same: bad white people going to Thailand to do bad things to Thai women/transsexuals because that's the "Thai way"The crime story is okay; the mystery would be much better if there was a little less "cultural exploration"... of course, this wouldn't be so bad if this was the first Burdett book you read, but it's the 3rd he wrote on this subject so by now I'm fully aware of how sexually depraved Westerners are.Maybe it's realistic, maybe it's not... but I'd like a bit more story and a bit less background on Thai-Western sexual relations.
Anyone interested in understanding how the Thais can appear to be so accepting of certain seediness in life while at the same time being so religious, and have a healthy love of police mysteries will love this book. This has everything that makes up a great story, with the addition of the supernatural. Burdett does a fantastic job of drawing the readers in and then locking them into a web of intrigue while exposing the complexities of the human psyche, that one is held in its grip and powerless to put it down.A DVD is sent to a Thai police detective containing a snuff video of a woman he once loved. He engages an old friend from the FBI in the US to help him uncover the syndicate behind the investment and the ultimate murder of his previous lover.Thrown into the web of intrigue are a corrupt Colonel of the police to which our hero reports, his assistant who's in the midst of a gender transformation, an English teacher with a criminal record, an English lawyer, a Chinese banker, a monk, a few prostitutes, a good dose of Thai cultural lessons and Buddhist teachings. The insights into Thai culture, and Thai words and phrases littered throughout the book rather than detract from the story, adds an interesting dimension to the book. I'm in search of others in the series now.
A mystery featuring Sonchai Jitpleecheep -- most of the characters were charming and interesting but I simply could not enjoy the book.
Just finished John Burdett’s Bangkok Haunts, the third installment of his series involving Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. Rather than give an extended rundown of the story, I think it would be enlightening, to use a phrase, to expound more on the series itself. Burdett has written a very intriguing set of books dealing with the life and culture of Thailand, set around the events of Sonchai, a member of the Royal Thai Police Force. Undoubtedly, the series is primarily literary crime drama, focusing on the Eastern perspective of bureaucracy, corruption, drug abuse and prostitution. However, it is also a profound plea to Westerners to acknowledge the stark difference between east and west in terms of economics, custom, and philosophy, and in turn its own hypocrisy.Jitpleecheep is a very nuanced and brilliantly written character. A devout Buddhist, he is often described as the only cop in Thailand who won’t take any bribes. Being Buddhist, however, doesn’t exclude the fact that he assists his mother in running a semi-popular brothel in Bangkok, or shall I say Krung Thep. He is always the understated, humble, rational, and weary cop not necessarily easing through life as he is balancing the poverty and politics his decisions and job entail. A marginalized “half-caste”, Sonchai oozes the aura of someone who just doesn’t belong due to his complex parentage, his features, and philosophy. Perhaps he is just too Buddhist for his own good.Complementing Jitpleecheep throughout the series are a number of bizarrely sublime characters. One is his his partner, Lek, a somewhat naive and passive sidekick who just so happens to be a ‘katoey’, or one undergoing a M2F gender reassignment. His American counterpart is FBI agent Kimberley Jones who appears attracted to Thailand only to be perpetually confused by Thai mores and even more by Jitpleecheep. There’s Nong, Sonchai’s mother, ever the businesswoman catering to the older ‘farang’ tourists escaping the US to look for love Thai-style. And finally there’s Colonel Vikorn, Sonchai’s superior and chief of Bangkok’s district 8. Vikorn is one of the more interesting characters created by Burdett; an undisclosed police chief by occupation yet drug-trafficking opportunist by choice. The symbiotic relationship between Vikorn and Jitpleecheep is humorously tense throughout the series as Sonchai is merely a source of entertainment, sometimes expendable while Vikorn serves as Sonchai’s gateway to awakening, both as a cop and Buddhist.In any case, Bangkok Haunts, like Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo, has Jitpleecheep being assigned to a murder investigation that no one wants solved without him sacrificing either his principles or his life. It involves a Count of Monte Cristo type theme of revenge, but with a magical twist, as well as a violently described playtime for elephants. And like the other novels it explores the depths of Bangkok and Southeast Asian culture, both the tragedy and the triumph of the move away from poverty, drugs, to something, well…better. If not for the suspenseful murder mystery, this series is just as good exploring another way of life.
I really liked how he shared the Thai culture! He managed to weave how and why they think into the story.
Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a detective with the Royal Thai Police force. He receives a disturbing DVD with a clip showing the death of a woman he once loved. He must unravel a complex conspiracy to get to the bottom of the crime. That thumbnail synopsis really can’t do justice to the depth of this story. Burdett's series with the Buddhist Thai detective has grown into one of the most original and distinctive in all of crime fiction. This book though, is a huge leap forward combining mysticism, sexual politics, and the complex culture of the Thai people in a fantastic novel. The exploration of the cultural clash between the east and west is fascinating and Burdett’s characters are genuine and full-bodied. Very highly recommended