Bangkok Tattoo

Interesting mystery, not so much for the plot, but for the setting. The main character in this mystery is Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police, the son of a prostitute turned brothel owner and an American stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Told through Sonchai's eyes, this story immerses you in the culture of Bangkok, from the accepted sex industry to the Buddhist spirituality of the Thai people. I loved the descriptions of Bangkok as Sonchai and his partner race around the city encountering drug traffickers, Muslim fundamentalists and the clueless 'farang' tourists. A great taste of Thailand! ( )

I didn't like this sequel as well as I liked the first one. This one was meandering, hard to follow, and lapsed into lecturing at times. I do like Sonchai, and the other characters are certainly interesting. I enjoy the vicarious Thai cultural experience, too. I'll probably read the next one. ( )

Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police is quite a character. He is called to investigate the death of an American CIA agent in a seedy hotel room. It was murder and a brutal violent one at that.

The murder comes at a time not that long after 9/11 and thus the death of any american is automatically assumed to be a terrorist killing with Al Qaeda at the bottom of it. Sonchai and his boss the Machiavellian Col. Vikorn are willing to the let the investigation to lead in that direction while they find the real killer.

On one occasion Sonchai wants to keep two additional CIA men off the scent and he calls out to them playing the role of a man in the street. at first he can decide on an accent because he can do British and American 'generally one uses Brit when talking to an American and vice versa: the two cultures seem to intimidate each other quite well. On instinct,though, I use American with Enthusiastic Immigrant coloring and in a flash they decide I have Green Card written all over me: obviously I'm the best they can hope for down here.'

Burdett pokes fun at the West as well as the East and he explains quite bit about the areas including how all religions interact in Thailand.

It had been quite a while since I read the first in this series, but I am looking forward to the next. ( )

The second of Burdett's novels featuring Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. This adventure opens with the apparent murder of a john by a prostitute employed by Sonchai's mother. What the book does well is to illustrate the Buddhist principle that what we take as reality is illusory. As the narrative unfolds, the reader constructs and is forced to discard multiple hypotheses regarding the murder and subsequent events. The motif of tattoos, which are a representation of life and thus themselves illusions, lends itself nicely to this premise. What is less successful in this installment is the plot, which never quite gathered sufficient energy to compel me. Elements such as Sonchai's relationship with the CIA operative from Bangkok 8 are raised but then dropped. While this might reflect a perspective that all is transient and meaningless, I do not think this was the author's intention; it simply appears to be an error. In addition, many of the characters are emotionally more flat than in the first book. This decreases empathy. Though Sonchai is represented as a non-corrupt cop, his morality and decision-making strategies are not Western. Because the author has not maintained the reader's empathy with Sonchai, many of his actions seem decidedly corrupt (whereas in Bangkok 8 they made sense given what the reader learned of Sonchai's interior dialogue and perspective). In addition, many of Sonchai's asides to the reader (addressed, as in Bangkok 8, as "farang" throughout) seem hostile and contemptuous, a jarring tone at odds with Sonchai's character. Indeed, many of these asides, such as long screeds on how Thai women are not really oppressed by prostitution, seem to reflect the authorial voice, not Sonchai's. I'm willing to suspend both disbelief and my own values in service to reading fiction, but this blurring of voice repeatedly drew me out of the narrative and into a silent argument with Burdett, who is, it should be noted, also a farang. ( )

Bangkok Tattoo is another enjoyable mystery from Burdett, and I enjoyed the story yet again. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a great narrator, and I enjoy getting his perspective on things, as a Thai and as a Buddhist. This is the one thing I find myself wondering about the most when I read both this and the first book in the series - how much can these perspectives be relied on, as Sonchai is written by not a Thai person but a British person?

That musing aside, I found the story enjoyable - it was twisty enough to keep me entertained, the characters were non-stereotypical enough to keep me interested, and the flashback in Chanya's diary was thoroughly enjoyable (for those of us who enjoy non-straightforward narratives). It was also quite enjoyable that the action was taken out of Bangkok and into a different part of Thailand for part of the story. Anyway, if you like mysteries, don't have a problem with violence and descriptions of sex work, I can definitely recommend this book. ( )