Bangkok Tattoo

Starred review from April 25, 2005
In Burdett's brilliantly cynical mystery thriller, the follow-up to Bangkok 8
(2004), Royal Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is called in by his supervisor, hard-bitten Captain Vikorn, to investigate the murder of a CIA operative, Mitch Turner, found disemboweled and mutilated. The prime suspect is a beautiful bar girl, Chanya, with whom Sonchai believes himself to be in love. When Turner's murder turns out to be far more complicated than originally thought, Sonchai must deal with his boss's rages and Chanya's gradually revealed secrets, along with CIA agents who have come to investigate the crime, a Thai army general with whom Vikorn has been feuding for years, Yakuza gangsters, Japanese tattooists, Muslim fundamentalists and more. Thoroughly familiar with Thailand, Burdett does an impressive job of depicting an often romanticized society from the inside out. His characters are unforgettable, his dialogue fast-paced and perfectly pitched, his numerous asides and observations generally as cutting as they are funny. Agent, Jane Gelfman. 9-city author tour.

January 1, 2005
In his second case (after Bangkok 8), Royal Thai Police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep stumbles over a murdered CIA agent; what's worse, he's sweet on the main suspect. With a nine-city tour.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2005
You've read a few Italian mysteries, and you think you know what moral ambiguity is all about. Time for a trip to District 8 in the heart of Bangkok's sex district, where Buddhist police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep simultaneously investigates crimes and works the bar in a brothel owned jointly by his mother and his boss, the exquisitely corrupt Colonel Vikorn. In this outrageous yet bizarrely tender follow-up to " Bangkok 8" (2003), Sonchai must solve the murder of a CIA agent before the trail leads to Chanya, the star whore at his mother's brothel, and before Colonel's Vikorn's elaborate cover-up plan, a fantasy about al-Qaeda agents fomenting trouble in southern Thailand, manages to start a revolution. The plot is incredibly elaborate, but it doesn't faze Sonchai, who reacts to so many opposing ideas dancing madly on the head of the same pin with a kind of Buddhist calm. Tunnel-visioned Western readers may shake their heads in dismay, but Sonchai understands perfectly when the killer says, "I could have castrated the whole city for her. That's love." (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)