The Bangkok Asset

June 29, 2015
An unusual crime scene disturbs Sonchai Jitpleecheep in Burdett’s wild and entertaining sixth novel featuring the Thai homicide detective (after 2012’s Vulture Peak). Near the corpse of a 12- or 13-year-old girl, whose head seems to have been pulled off her body by sheer brute force, someone wrote a message in the victim’s blood indicating that the writer knows who Sonchai’s father is. Before he can really process this suggestion regarding his unknown biological father, Sonchai witnesses two men in a boat each throw a woman off a boat to drown in the Chao Phraya River during a storm. The tragedy only gets weirder when video of the crimes shows that the boat’s other passenger, an enormously strong “tall blond farang,” swimming to shore against a raging current. That man is seen meeting with Joseph Goldman, a CIA spook, who was involved in notorious mind-control experiments. Impressively, everything comes together for a dramatic and satisfying, though downbeat, ending. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents.

August 1, 2015
Sonchai Jitpleecheep, Thai police detective and co-owner, with his mother, of a Bangkok brothel, has been searching for his American father almost as long as Aimee Leduc, in Cara Black's Parisian-set series, has been tracking her mother. Both are haunted by abandonment, but both should be careful what they wish for. What Sonchai learns about his father in Burdett's latest thriller has far-reaching implications that extend well beyond personal. The tale starts with a series of improbable murdersa decapitated murder victim whose head was seemingly twisted, not chopped, offand a demonstration by a maverick American arms dealer for the Chinese government of the abilities of a man with superhuman strength. Soon enough, Sonchai is in the middle of a doomsday scenario involving genetically altered transhumans who could become unstoppable enforcers in the police state that many believe is on the immediate horizon, after economic turmoil and class warfare take their inevitable toll. The novel is a bit premise heavythough that premise is certainly compellingbut there is still enough of the ever-appealing Sonchai, whose many-sided personality holds kaleidoscopic fascination, to keep series fans in thrall.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)