Bangkok 8 (Hardcover)

The "8" of the title refers to a police precinct. The book's narrator Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep and his partner Pichai Apiradee are the only detectives in the City of Angels (the meaning of the Thai name for the capital city, Krung Thep) who do not take bribes. Both are protégés of a Buddhist abbott whose brother is Col. Vikorn, the immensely rich commander of precinct 8's police force.

Col. Vikorn has assigned Sonchai and Pichai to follow William Bradley, a strikingly handsome and very large black U. S. Marine sergeant. The policeman lose him in traffic and then real disaster strikes. There is a killing of diabolical refinement that required considerable organization. "Whodunit?" is a question of interest to Sonchai and there are an array of powers (official and criminal, Thai and American, and very interconnected) seeking to prevent one answer to that question. Plus, there are the more interesting questions of how the killing was organized and why the particular and elaborate method was developed for executing a novice and minor player in the (also interconnected) businesses of jade mining, art fraud, drug-smuggling, Khmer Rouge thuggery, and payoffs of Thai officials.

Sonchai is the son of a bar-girl (prostitute) and a US serviceman who was on R&R from the Vietnam war and, as a child, accompanied his mother on her extended romances in France, German, and the United States. Sonchai is multilingual and as the token clean cop is often a liaison from the Bangkok police to western embassies when something happens to one of their citizens (or, in this case, staff members). Culturally, Sonchai is Thai. With his Eurasian features, foreign travels, and fluency in western languages, however, he cannot be totally unself-consciously Thai, which is convenient for including reflections on Thai ways of doing things that would be taken-for-granted by most Thais. (And less of a reach for the non-Thai novelist.)

Sonchai's very pragmatic mother, who goes into business with Col. Vikorn as a partner and (of course!) protector, Pichai's mother ) who was also a prostitute), a very strikingly beautiful outcast (progeny of a black GI and a Karin mother), and Sonchai (who grew up in and around the flesh trade) lay out indigenous views of prostitution and drug trafficking. (There is also a houseful or Russian prostitutes in Pattaya with similar views about "degradation" and making money that Sonchai visits to get information.)

There are, indeed, a vast assortment of characters, some wild humor, a smattering of sex (along with a standoff between the Buddhist Sonchai determined to remain chaste and Kimberly Jones, the attractive and smart FBI agent dispatched to aid investigation of the marine's killing), and some action of the mayhem and murder variety. (There are guns on view, but no gunfire.) The mix of Buddhist laissez-faire (or is it fatalism?) and entrepreneurial materialism (Chinese even more than American) affecting Thais in the teeming metropolis seems accurate to me, as does the rendering of Bangkok's heat and humidity (not just the Patpong indoors kinds...).

The plot is very complicated, and connected to epic and very international corruption. Some readers feel let down by the ending. My view is that it would be impossible to top the beginning and that the ending is fitting - somewhat contrived and including karmic retribution within the lifetime of a central villain rather than leaving it to reincarnation, - but just right in mood. I don't buy the FBI agent's final involvement, but am impressed that there aren't loose ends, considering how many there were to tie up. Burdett's mastery of the craft of plotting is impressive.

He also creates many interesting characters (Kimberly Jones is a failure, but a valiant attempt), particularly the narrator and his boss. It does seem that almost everyone (except the Khmer assassins) is very articulate and ready to explain themselves - their justifications for what they do and how they fit into larger schemes - to Sonchai. Sonchai is regarded by some (but not by himself) as an arhat (a Thai bodhisattva, i.e., an enlightened being who out of compassion sticks around to try to relieve suffering, particularly human anguish). Like Sonchai being biracial and bicultural, his aura of being an arhat is convenient in providing a rationale for the author to provide explanations to the reader. That everyone responds to Sonchai by spilling their guts strains credulity, but does not leave the reader befuddled in the way real life often does. As a vengeance thriller, as a series of vignettes into tumultous social change in Bangkok, and as a look into some views of sex and drugs alien to Americans, even to anti-puritanical ones, Bangkok 8 is a very accomplished novel. Pick up a copy of this terrific page-turner. Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Bangkok, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition," a funny, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.