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BANGKOK 8
by John Burdett
Knopf, June 2003
318 pages
$24.00
ISBN: 1400040442


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

BANGKOK 8 is a well-written, highly unusual mystery novel with a most exotic background. It would be interesting to compare and contrast it with Qiu Xiaolong's DEATH OF A RED HEROINE, but that would take too much space, so I'll mention just one aspect: Both fascinating stories, the one book shows a Thailand every bit as regimented in one way as the other shows China regimented in another. Only China is under the absolute control of single-party politics while Thailand is under the absolute control of single-minded sex.

Bangkok might well meet a woman's lib conception of hell. Males (probably females, too) come from all over the world to indulge in the kind of freely found sex that they can get in their own countries only with great difficulty and threat of prosecution. Young girls from the villages, and from other countries, come to Bangkok and go into prostitution, both joyfully and painfully, as if it were the only occupation open to them. What kind of sex? You name it, and then some.

Of course, the people of the "City of Angels" are also interested in money, power, jade (which figures prominently in this book), drugs, and the Buddhist religion (about which we learn much). We also learn that the name of the city, Krung Thep means City of Angels, but, as Sonchai, says, "we are happy to call it Bangkok if it helps to separate a farang (foreigner) from his money." Sonchai is a son of a whore, and he's also a police detective and the protagonist of the story.

There are a lot of unusual things in this novel, and not the least of them is that it's written in the narrative present. I have previously refused to read stories written in the present tense, but in this case it sneaked up on me. Here the usage is so well handled that I had already read too far before I realized how it was written. Writing this way, the author has occasionally to go into the past, so he uses the more customary past narrative, but the way he effortlessly and transparently switches from one to the other and back is a tribute to his writing power. He also is quite artful in the use of flashbacks because he subtly prepares us for them long before.

Sonchai and his partner and soul brother, Pichai, are following a black American marine sergeant driving a Mercedes. They lose him, but find the car again where it has stopped. Inside is a python twirled around the marine with its mouth wide open trying to swallow the marine's head. Pichai investigates, but the car is full of cobras, too, and he is bitten many times and killed. Sonchai notices that both the python and the cobras are swaying frantically as if they had been drugged.

As I said, this is an unusual story. With the death of Pichai, half the honest policemen in Bangkok are gone, since honest Sonchai is the only one left. The other main characters include Police Colonel Vikorn, chief of District 8, a suave self-made multi-millionaire. Each head of a police district in Bangkok is a millionaire, but Vikorn especially stands out for the luxurious life he leads. Vikorn is unusually indulgent in his treatment of the unfortunately honest Sonchai out of respect and remembrance of Sonchai's mother, Nong.

Sonchai is half Thai and half Caucasian, thanks to a liaison some 31 years ago between his mother and one of her clients. Thanks also to his mother, he is internationally savvy, speaking both fluent French and German, because as a child he accompanied his mother as she lived in Paris and other European parts when she was the sex companion to various wealthy men. Fifty years old now, Nong makes up in guile what she may have lost (although not a lot) in sexuality. She's a superb entrepreneur; knowing that starting a new brothel in Bangkok would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, she decides to go for a special niche, figuring that Viagra and over-50 men in other countries were just made for what Bangkok can liberally offer. She calls her new super brothel, The Old Man's Club.

Together with start-up capital and protection from her friend Colonel Vikorn, Nong advertises in America and elsewhere. Vikorn has even purchased at great cost from an American gangster a specialized e-mail list, and they have their own Web page with keywords such as Viagra, sex, Bangkok, go go, porn, impotence, and prostate, the new electronic age equivalent of "Hey, you, sailor," or, as when I lived overseas, "Hi, you handsome American boy." See especially Chapter 37, which is hilarious.

Of course, the Old Man's Club, "providing libido therapy to the aged," isn't solving the murder, which strangely no one except Sonchai seems to want to see solved. Perhaps it's the presence of Sylvester Warren, an extremely wealthy American jewel merchant, jade collector, and sex enthusiast, the friend of American presidents and foreigners of the highest rank. But Sonchai is not only an honest man, he is honor-bound to find and kill the person responsible for the death of his soul brother. Through his eyes we see Bangkok from its seamiest to its most ostentatiously luxurious.

The author has a clever way with words. Speaking of farmers coming to live in the city, he refers to their new hardship as "the sadistic vivisection of life into hours, minutes, and seconds." "The polluted beauty of human life." "Be nice to incompetents [because if you're nasty] they'll still be incompetent, so what do you gain by making an enemy?" "Euthanasia by orgasm." "When people find a common passion, they overlook social barriers."

I could find some faults with the story. The author's lack of knowledge of the F.B.I. and of black American culture shows through (the writer is a Brit who outside of the U.K. seems to have lived mainly in Europe and Hong Kong). There are a few grammatical errors. Fatima, a half Thai, half black woman of outstanding beauty and shape, at times speaks and acts out of character and background. These are not enough to interfere with one's enjoyment of a well-written, most interesting, and provocatively different novel. The characters are well-delinated and fascinating in their own right. The plot is original and the setting is rich. It's a thoroughly enjoyable book.

Incidentally, the hardback back cover design reminds me of the Beatles' Abbey Road logo, the half apple, or I am suffering from sexual hallucination?

Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, August 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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