Bangkok Tattoo (Paperback)
| Author: John Burdett |
| Format: | Paperback |
Product Details:
| From the author of "Bangkok 8" comes a head-spinning novel that puts readers back in the company of the inimitable Royal Thai Police detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep. From the Publisher: 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 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. About the Author: |
Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a profoundly spiritual Bangkok police detective maintaining his unique sense of integrity within a corrupt system, returns in this violently farcical, twisty sequel to the bestselling and equally outrageous BANGKOK 8. Moonlighting at his mother Nong's bar/brothel, Sonchai has fallen not-so-secretly in love with the establishment's star performer, Chanya. That makes it particularly awkward when a blood-soaked but unharmed Chanya is discovered next to the disemboweled, flayed, and castrated corpse of her latest client, an American CIA agent. Sonchai is left with the unenviable task of figuring out why the American was killed while simultaneously covering up the crime to avoid CIA involvement in the investigation.
Praise
"[O]utrageous yet bizarrely tender." - Bill Ott 05/01/2005 Kirkus Reviews
"Another wacky, wild-side traipse through Thailand's fleshpots, eateries and spiritual havens....[A] wry, wise and wonderful romp." 04/01/2005 Publishers Weekly
"[B]rilliantly cynical....[Burdett's] characters are unforgettable, his dialogue fast-paced and perfectly pitched, his numerous asides and observations generally as cutting as they are funny." (starred review) 04/25/2005 New York Times Book Review
"The atmosphere in BANGKOK TATTOO is no less humidly and richly imagined...than in BANGKOK 8." - Charles Taylor 06/05/2005 Salon
"John Burdett's giddy, wicked, hilarious crime novels are not for the oversensitive American....[W]e, the devoted admirers of Sonchai, say...Lighten up, farang. The chance to view Westerners through skeptical Asian eyes (sort of; after all, Burdett is a Brit living in Hong Kong) is one of the things that make the Bangkok 8 novels so delicious." - Laura Miller 06/06/2005 New Yorker
"The plot showcases Burdett's sly riffs on Third World stereotypes, Buddhism, and the gustatory pleasures of fried grasshoppers. It's a giddy, occasionally over-the-top performance, but mesmerizing: a comic tour of the underbelly of Bangkok in pursuit of both a murderer and the sublime." 07/11 & 07/18/2005 Literary Review
"Compulsive, shockingly readable thriller which refuses to moralise and refutes the standard Western notion of Thailand as a nation in which 'working girls are the down-trodden slaves of a chauvinistic, male-dominated culture.'...Original, exciting, poetic and somehow salutary." - Philip Oakes August 2005
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