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Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police returns in his riveting and smokily atmospheric new thriller.A farang–a foreigner–has been murdered, his body horribly mutilated, at the Bangkok brothel co-owned by Sonchai’s mother and his boss. The dead man was a CIA agent. To make matters worse, the apparent culprit is sweet-natured Chanya, the brothel’s top earner and a woman whom the devoutly Buddhist sleuth has loved for several lifetimes. How can Sonchai solve this crime show more without sending Chanya to prison? How can he engage in a cover-up without endangering his karma? And how will he ever get to the bottom of a case whose interested parties include American spooks, Muslim fundamentalists, and gangsters from three countries? As addictive as opium, as hot as Sriracha chili sauce, and bursting with surprises, Bangkok Tattoo will leave its mark on you. show lessTags
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MyriadBooks For another take on collecting tattoos from still-living bodies.
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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!
Another amazingly original novel, as poetic, exotic, hilarious, and engaging as the first in the series, BANGKOK 8.The narrator, a Buddhist policeman who works on the side in his mother's brothel for elderly farangs (foreigners) addresses the reader as he explains how things work in Thailand. Murder, as his entrepreneurial mother points out, is bad for business, and the particular murder that opens the book is difficult to tidy up since their most elegant working asset seems to have killed an American CIA agent. Sorting out what happened without creating a nasty international incident involves investigating Muslim moderates in the south, dealing with European drug smugglers, and following the trail of a talented if somewhat unhinged show more Japanese tattoo artist. Burdett is a wonderful stylist. A British drug smuggler is described as having a "shaved skull like a pink coconut that belongs at the end of a battering ram, a fat round face bursting with Neolithic fury, small eyes, ironmongery hanging from his pincushion ears, short and incredibly muscular arms and legs, a frown characteristic of the intellectually deprived, tattoos on both forearms screaming of his inextinguishable love for Mother (left forearm) and Denise (on the right, in indigo, from elbow to wrist), and puncture marks in all major veins" (99). If Dickens were reincarnated as a Buddhist in Thailand and took as his subject the economics and ironies of gender identities and the sex industry in a post-colonial world, he might write a book like this. show less
I have enjoyed this book very much - up until the ending. I enjoyed the character development, the musings about culture, the interjected cultural explorations of Buddhism, the Western culture, the morally ambiguous situations and characters. I especially like Colonel Vikorn - you never know if you should love him or hate him. I also enjoyed the Chanya story, the nuanced ways of developing her love affairs (although it is a bit hard to believe that a prostitute would be able to have full-fledged relationships - inability to enjoy sex and develop trust is a disease of the trade, but I let that one pass), the description of the tormented mind of her lovers. Throw in some witty scenes in the back of the brothel or in restaurants, and you show more got a mesmerizing, fun novel.
Until the end. I find no joy in the obscure and morbid ending, and no connection to the rest of the story. It is a twist thrown in, not drawn from the character and previously developed plot. So, another brilliant person turns into an evil monster. Haven't we done that before? The lurid details seem sensationalistic and voyeuristic. I would have liked a less graphic and more sophisticated ending, with real motivations, instead of the stock greed and madman combination.
Five stars until the last murder. Two after that. show less
Until the end. I find no joy in the obscure and morbid ending, and no connection to the rest of the story. It is a twist thrown in, not drawn from the character and previously developed plot. So, another brilliant person turns into an evil monster. Haven't we done that before? The lurid details seem sensationalistic and voyeuristic. I would have liked a less graphic and more sophisticated ending, with real motivations, instead of the stock greed and madman combination.
Five stars until the last murder. Two after that. show less
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 show more 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. show less
Bangkok Tattoo had good reviews and deservedly so. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police is an interesting character: a police officer who doesn't seem to work very hard, a Buddhist, and co-owner of a club/brothel that principally services visiting farangs (foreigners). A farang, friend of the of the brothel's top earner, is found brutally murdered, an event that occurred when the top earner, Chanya, was in the room. To confuse things further, Sonchai is deeply in love with Chanya, Sonchai's boss in the police service (who is also engaged in drugs and whatever else is lucrative) is in deadly conflict with a corrupt Thai army general, the CIA gets involved because the murder victim was one of theirs, Sonchai's boss pins show more it on foreign muslim radicals, which really gets the CIA types wound up, an extremely talented and weird Japanese tattoo artist enters the picture, and crime lords from both China and Japan get involved. In addition to all this, there is the lively underworld of brothel life in Bangkok, disquisitions on Buddhism, the moral and social squalor of the West, and the failures of American foreign policy. Sonchai is not so much a detective who makes things happen as he unravels a case; he is more a keen observer and guide and trenchant commentator. The writing is very good; the atmosphere is terrific; the characters are believable and entertaining; the story and the pace are excellent. This is well worth a quick summer read. show less
Another exotic excursion into Bangkok, but mostly into the mind of Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. This time he is investigating the murder of a CIA agent who just happens to have been seriously involved with a prostitute that Sonchai himself is deeply in love with. The first few pages start off as a very black comedy, but the horror, brutality, and reality of what follows make it pretty hard for a reader to keep a smile for very long. As the story moves along, there are any number of diversions into sex, morality, Buddhism, and (somewhat annoyingly) the shortcomings of the West and America in particular. All in all, this has the same fascination as Bangkok 8, but it comes to a rather inconclusive ending with the main crime solved, but show more with more than a few loose ends left to perhaps be resolved in a future installment in the series. Throughout the novel, Sonchai's boss, Colonel Vikorn, pretty much steals whatever scene he appears in. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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20+ Works 5,175 Members
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Bangkok Tattoo
- Original publication date
- 2005
- People/Characters
- Sonchai Jitpleecheep; Chanya; Colonel Vikorn
- Important places
- Bangkok, Thailand; Thailand; District 8, Bangkok, Thailand
- Epigraph
- Israelites, Christians, and Muslims profess immortality, but the veneration they render this world proves they believe only in it, since they destine all other worlds, in infinite number, to be its reward or punishment. The... (show all) wheel of certain Hindustani religions seems more reasonable to me. —Jorge Luis Borges, _The Immortal_
What? Could perhaps, in spite of all "modern ideas" and prejudices of democratic taste, the victory of optimism, the achieved predominance of reason, practical and theoretical utilitarianism, like democracy itself, its contemporary—be a symptom of failing strength, of approaching old age, of physiological exhaustion? ...what is the meaning of—morality? ...all things move in a double cycle: everything which we now call culture, education, civilization will at some stage have to appear before the infallible judge, Dionysus. —Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_ - Dedication
- For Sofía
- First words
- "Killing customers just isn't good for business."
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Be generous and grateful (and honest when you are not), humanity lives at the busiest crossroads in the seven thousand universes, I am yours in dharma, Sonchai Jitpleecheep (there is no ending and therefore no period)
- Blurbers
- Hiaasen, Carl; Ellroy, James
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- Reviews
- 36
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- (3.63)
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- 8 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Croatian, Spanish
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 28
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- 7