Bangkok 8 (Sonchai Jitpleecheep Series #1)

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
This street-smart thriller set in the mean streets of Bangkok features Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, son of a former Thai bar girl and a long-gone American G.I. An aspiring Buddhist monk with a druggie past he doesn't disavow, Jitpleecheep loves examining human nature and metaphysics, but he is truly enlightened when it comes to the internationally notorious, seamy, and seedy sides of Bangkok. Author John Burdett opens the proceedings in spectacular fashion with the stunningly horrific murder of an American marine. When Jitpleecheep's partner and soul brother is killed -- by a doped cobra -- minutes into the investigation, the mellow detective's mission to solve the crime becomes both personal and spiritual. He vows to avenge his partner's death by killing the people responsible. Populated with Thai prostitutes, European and American sex tourists, the FBI, drug dealers both large and small, and more crooked cops than a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, Bangkok 8 is as addictive as speed and as thrilling as sex. You'll be hooked until the bitter, explosive end. Andrew Ayala

The New York Times

… part "Blade Runner" and part Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles … — Michiku Kakutani

NY Times Sunday Book Review

What Burdett, a former lawyer who now lives in Hong Kong, is doing is seducing his readers into thinking not as logical Westerners devoted to the basic rule of cause and effect but as Thai Buddhists who accept and even celebrate life's illogical turns. — David Willis McCullough

The Washington Post

Bangkok 8 meets the thriller genre's requirements -- it's set in an exotic locale; its dramatis personae are in various measures violent, beautiful and mysterious; its plot is labyrinthine and surprising; its ending is ambiguous and ironic -- except one: It is not what reviewers insist on calling a "page-turner." Quite to the contrary. You make your way slowly, painstakingly through Bangkok 8, because you don't want to miss a thing -- not because of the plot's twists and turns, though you do have to pay attention, but because John Burdett is purely and simply a wonderful writer, a genuine grown-up at work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents. — Jonathan Yardley

Publishers Weekly

Set in Thailand's capital in the mid-1990s, this ambitious first novel by Burdett (The Last Six Million Seconds) follows the city's only honest police detective, Sonchai Jitplecheep, as he searches for the person responsible for the deaths of his partner (a friend from childhood) and an American Marine sergeant. This thriller abounds with sensational elements-from homicidal vipers on speed to jade smuggling and the Thai sex trade-but listeners would be wise to follow the lead of Buddhist narrator Sonchai, who is more interested in the graceful acceptance of life's puzzles than in their resolution. The policeman's account of his harsh life and what he must do to serve both the Buddha and his teeming, decadent city enriches the novel, but those fond of neatly wrapped tales may find the surreal but shocking finale less than satisfying. The inspired casting of Wong, who's known for his roles in Madame Butterfly and Oz, more than makes up for this small flaw, however. Wong skillfully conveys the secret pain and self-doubt lurking beneath Sonchai's insouciant facade, while underlining the Eastern mood and the dark humor of Burdett's unique noir tale. (June) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Pichai and Sonchai, Buddhist penitents and incorruptible anomalies among Thai police, are tailing an African American marine when they find him murdered in his Mercedes, killed by a mass of cobras and a giant python. When Pichai himself succumbs to a fatal bite, Amerasian detective Sonchai Jitplecheep sets out to avenge his death. Paired with a blonde FBI agent who provides sexual tension and acts as a Western foil for Sonchai's disarming mysticism, he follows strands of forensic and karmic evidence leading to a beguiling dark beauty, a high-powered jade dealer, Chinese businessmen, and Khmer Rouge thugs. In his second East-meets-West thriller (after The Last Six Million Seconds), Burdett evokes an intriguing and exotic Bangkok where hungry ghosts and capitalists throng the busy intersection of the eightfold path and the red-light district. The depiction of the occasional kinkiness and sadism of this world never seems gratuitous and is skillfully refracted through a highly original sleuth. The pace never flags, every page unfolding fresh mysteries of the psychological, cultural, metaphysical, and locked-room varieties. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/03.]-David Wright, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

East and West coexist in a murderous symbiosis in this exotic thriller by British author (and Hong Kong resident) Burdett (The Last Six Million Seconds, 1997, etc.). This tangled tale of drugs, sex, and political corruption is narrated by Krung Tep (i.e., Bangkok) detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a "half-caste Third World cop who speaks English and French," has a criminal past, and still does the local drug of choice ("yaa baa"). Burdett kickstarts the tale with a dynamite opening sequence: the discovery of black US Marine William Bradley’s dead body in his Mercedes, filled with seemingly drug-crazed cobras and a giant python wrapped amorously around the torso of the deceased. Sonchai’s investigation, done in tandem with American authorities, and abetted and complicated by gorgeous FBI agent Kimberley Jones, takes us through the meanest and seamiest streets of District 8 (Sonchai’s turf), and introduces us to a beguiling gallery of sinister personages portrayed with black-comic brio. The principals include a beautiful black woman whose relationship to Bradley isn’t initially clear; Sonchai’s pragmatic mother Nong, a retired "bar girl" interested in the commercial potential of Viagra; his crafty boss Colonel Vikorn, who’s a little too cozy with CIA ops in Thailand and abroad; jade mogul (and connoisseur of Bangkok’s thriving sex industry) Sylvester Warren; and a fast-talking transsexual with a sure survival instinct. A Russian nuclear physicist turned pimp, "Barbara Hutton’s jadeite wedding necklace," and an educational visit to a crocodile farm keep the reader alert--even when Sonchai’s summary descriptions of Bangkok’s history, culture, and economic priorities lapse into exposition andbackground information clumsily grafted onto the story. Burdett is more successful with Sonchai’s frequent citations of Buddhist wisdom: they’re funny, endearing (and informative) building blocks in the creation of an unusual and interesting protagonist. Enjoyable, mostly, with a savage payoff and a smoky, acidic aftertaste. First printing of 100,000