When a U.S. Marine is killed in Bangkok, the task of finding the murderer falls to Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, seemingly the only member of the Royal Thai Police Force whose idea of justice precludes his fellow officers' customary system of bribery. This assignment's especially important to the devout detective for during the investigation of the murder scene, the methamphetamine-stoked snakes that bit the marine also kill Sonchai's police partner, best friend, and Buddhist soul-mate Pichai. Sonchai's pursuit of revenge will team him with a sexually frustrated FBI agent and leave them at the mercy of yaa-baa-fueled motorcycle-taxi drivers as they hurtle through neon-lit Bangkok and into the labyrinthine and deadly machinations of the international jade and drug trades in search of the killer.

As Sonchai himself notes at one point, "This isn't a whodunit, is it?" And, no, it isn't, but author John Burdett (A Personal History of Thirst, The Last Six Million Seconds) infuses the plot with enough suspense, detail, and dry Asian insight to keep readers rapt as the story careens about the bars and brothels of Thailand's flesh trade, through its cut-rate plastic surgery parlors, and ends in a climax with a fittingly Buddhist twist. Bangkok 8 is highly recommended for readers in the mood for Thai. --Benjamin Reese


From Publishers Weekly
Part mystery, part thriller and part exploration of Thai attitudes toward sex, this accomplished first novel by Burdett (A Personal History of Thirst; The Last Six Million Seconds) delivers both entertainment and depth. The narrator, a Buddhist cop named Sonchai Jitplecheep, finds himself plunged into a dangerous investigation of the deaths by snakebite of his partner Pichai Apiradee and U.S. Embassy Sgt. William Bradley. Sonchai is an unusual character on several levels, from the mysteries of his violent past to his conversations with the ghost of Pichai. His ambiguous feelings toward Kimberley Jones, an American FBI agent brought in to work the case, reflect his upbringing as the child of a Thai mother and an unknown American father. Above all else, however, Sonchai's Buddhism permeates the text. An encounter with an embassy official, for example, leads to this unexpected reverie: "[She] is blithely unaware that she once accompanied me across a courtyard of startlingly similar dimensions, thousands of years ago." As Sonchai's investigation brings him closer to Bradley's companion, a woman known as Fatima, and the rich American jade dealer Sylvester Warren, his quest for revenge becomes muddied by the strangeness of his discoveries. The mix of detective work, Bangkok street life, the Thai sex trade and drug smuggling forms a powerful melange of images and insight. Despite an anti-climactic last chapter, the novel's structure is solid. Sonchai's fatalism, wry humor and dogged determination-his ability to be both vulnerable and strong-make him one of the more memorable characters in recent novel-length fiction. Readers expecting a traditional mystery structure would be advised to look elsewhere, but those who want something new will find Burdett's novel an intriguing, fresh take on noir.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Sonchai, the only honest cop in Bangkok, vows to avenge themurder of his partner and soul mate. From that resolve our hero, adevout Buddhist and son of a prostitute, delves into the seamy streetsof Thailand's decadent, exotic capital. He partners with a female FBIagent, and the two develop a mutual sexual attraction-repulsion.Tough-cop "noir" clichés abound, cleverly and arrestingly"Asianized" by the author, a Brit who has lived in Bangkok and knowsit intimately. B.D. Wong made a sensation in his Broadway debut inM. BUTTERFLY. In this excellent abridgment, he demonstrates hisexpertise with characters, accents, and narrative twists. Yet, somehowhe fails to deliver the text's thick atmosphere and sense of danger.Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Bangkok cop Sonchai Jitpleecheep is the only honest officer in his district, yet he reveres his gangster police colonel. He stays out of the city's sex trade but indulges in meth. He's the son of a crafty whore and an American GI, but his mother's hand-picked clients gave him a classical education. While his personality puzzles Westerners--Sonchai also sees the past incarnations of people he meets--these contradictory traits are quite acceptable to his fellow Thais. The more readers get to know Sonchai, the more appealing he'll become. A Buddhist, he nonetheless promises to kill those responsible for the death of his partner, Pichai. Because Pichai was bitten by a cobra while tracking a Marine suspected of jade smuggling, Sonchai's vow piques the interest of U.S. officials. Once they team him with a feisty FBI agent, the investigation takes a series of wonderfully bizarre turns. It's Chinatown, and everything's jake. Burdett's few missteps--including a key revelation handled too matter-of-factly and a woefully farcical coda--can't trip up an otherwise surefooted and satisfying tale. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“A tour de force. . . . Burdett is purely and simply a wonderful writer.” —The Washington Post

"A stiletto-sharp mystery/thriller . . . brilliantly rendered." —The Seattle Times-Post Intelligencer

“Like Thai cuisine, Burdett’s comic thriller blends spicy, sour, salty and sweet—and makes for a delicious wake-up for jaded palates.” —People

“Vividly written and even more vividly imagined. . . . This novel is as wild as the city in which it takes place. . . . Read it to blow your mind.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“A thriller as exotic as it is enthralling, and as provocative as it is obscene.” –Harper’s

“One of the year's most seductive thrillers. . . . Think of Bangkok 8 as a destination spot for any reader with a taste for the exotic and desire for a really good time.” –New York Daily News

“Gruesome and memorable.” –The New York Times

“Burdett knows how to dole out engagingly gory details and hard-boiled platter.” –Entertainment Weekly

“A different kind of mystery, one you’re not likely to have seen before. . . . Bangkok 8 makes you change your perspective. It takes you into another world and exposes you to different ways of thinking.” —Rocky Mountain News

“Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.” –Carl Hiaasen

“Edgy, intricate and atmospheric . . . [Burdett] uses plenty of narrative sleight-of-hand to weave together character development, comic relief and inspired plot twists while steering clear of facile exoticism.” —Time Out, New York

“The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you’ve blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won’t let you go. Read this book, savor the language–it’s the last–and the most compelling word in thrillers.” –James Ellroy

“Characters are well-developed and the tale is carefully woven and fun to read.”
–Columbus Dispatch


Review
"A stunning thriller! Bangkok 8 is suspense at its best: a masterfully written tale set in a world that's perfectly evoked and populated with compelling, flesh-and-blood characters."
--Jeffery Deaver, author of The Vanished Man and The Stone Monkey

"Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down."
--Carl Hiaasen

?The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you?ve blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won?t let you go. Read this book, savor the language?it?s the last?and the most compelling word in thrillers.?
--James Ellroy


From the Hardcover edition.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
This street-smart thriller set in the mean streets of Bangkok features Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, son of a former Thai bar girl and a long-gone American G.I. An aspiring Buddhist monk with a druggie past he doesn't disavow, Jitpleecheep loves examining human nature and metaphysics, but he is truly enlightened when it comes to the internationally notorious, seamy, and seedy sides of Bangkok. Author John Burdett opens the proceedings in spectacular fashion with the stunningly horrific murder of an American marine. When Jitpleecheep's partner and soul brother is killed -- by a doped cobra -- minutes into the investigation, the mellow detective's mission to solve the crime becomes both personal and spiritual. He vows to avenge his partner's death by killing the people responsible. Populated with Thai prostitutes, European and American sex tourists, the FBI, drug dealers both large and small, and more crooked cops than a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, Bangkok 8 is as addictive as speed and as thrilling as sex. You'll be hooked until the bitter, explosive end. Andrew Ayala

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Under a Bangkok bridge, inside a bolted-shut Mercedes: a murder by snake - a charismatic African American Marine sergeant killed by a methamphetamine-stoked python and a swarm of stoned cobras." "Two cops - the only two in the city not on the take - arrive too late. Minutes later, only one is alive: Sonchai Jitpleecheep - a devout Buddhist, equally versed in the sacred and the profane - son of a long-gone Vietnam War G.I. and a Thai bar girl whose subsequent international clientele contributed richly to Sonchai's sophistication." Now, his partner dead, Sonchai is doubly compelled to find the murderer, to maneuver through the world he knows all to well - illicit drugs, prostitution, infinite corruption - and into a realm he has never before encountered: the moneyed underbelly of the city, where desire rules and the human body is no less custom-designable than a raw hunk of jade. And where Sonchai tracks the killer - and a predator of an even more sinister variety.

SYNOPSIS

Electrifying, darkly comic, razor-edged￯﾿ﾽa thriller unlike any other.

Under a Bangkok bridge, inside a bolted-shut Mercedes: a murder by snake￯﾿ﾽa charismatic African American Marine sergeant killed by a methamphetamine-stoked python and a swarm of stoned cobras.

Two cops￯﾿ﾽthe only two in the city not on the take￯﾿ﾽarrive too late.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

… part "Blade Runner" and part Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles … — Michiku Kakutani

NY Times Sunday Book Review

What Burdett, a former lawyer who now lives in Hong Kong, is doing is seducing his readers into thinking not as logical Westerners devoted to the basic rule of cause and effect but as Thai Buddhists who accept and even celebrate life's illogical turns. — David Willis McCullough

The Washington Post

Bangkok 8 meets the thriller genre's requirements -- it's set in an exotic locale; its dramatis personae are in various measures violent, beautiful and mysterious; its plot is labyrinthine and surprising; its ending is ambiguous and ironic -- except one: It is not what reviewers insist on calling a "page-turner." Quite to the contrary. You make your way slowly, painstakingly through Bangkok 8, because you don't want to miss a thing -- not because of the plot's twists and turns, though you do have to pay attention, but because John Burdett is purely and simply a wonderful writer, a genuine grown-up at work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents. — Jonathan Yardley

Publishers Weekly

Part mystery, part thriller and part exploration of Thai attitudes toward sex, this accomplished first novel by Burdett (A Personal History of Thirst; The Last Six Million Seconds) delivers both entertainment and depth. The narrator, a Buddhist cop named Sonchai Jitplecheep, finds himself plunged into a dangerous investigation of the deaths by snakebite of his partner Pichai Apiradee and U.S. Embassy Sgt. William Bradley. Sonchai is an unusual character on several levels, from the mysteries of his violent past to his conversations with the ghost of Pichai. His ambiguous feelings toward Kimberley Jones, an American FBI agent brought in to work the case, reflect his upbringing as the child of a Thai mother and an unknown American father. Above all else, however, Sonchai's Buddhism permeates the text. An encounter with an embassy official, for example, leads to this unexpected reverie: "[She] is blithely unaware that she once accompanied me across a courtyard of startlingly similar dimensions, thousands of years ago." As Sonchai's investigation brings him closer to Bradley's companion, a woman known as Fatima, and the rich American jade dealer Sylvester Warren, his quest for revenge becomes muddied by the strangeness of his discoveries. The mix of detective work, Bangkok street life, the Thai sex trade and drug smuggling forms a powerful melange of images and insight. Despite an anti-climactic last chapter, the novel's structure is solid. Sonchai's fatalism, wry humor and dogged determination-his ability to be both vulnerable and strong-make him one of the more memorable characters in recent novel-length fiction. Readers expecting a traditional mystery structure would be advised to look elsewhere, but those who want something new will find Burdett's novel an intriguing, fresh take on noir. (June 10) Forecast: Knopf may be taking a bit of a gamble on this genre-bending effort-a 100,000-copy first printing is planned-but strong reviews and a flashy jacket should help get sales off to a good start. Random House Audio. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Pichai and Sonchai, Buddhist penitents and incorruptible anomalies among Thai police, are tailing an African American marine when they find him murdered in his Mercedes, killed by a mass of cobras and a giant python. When Pichai himself succumbs to a fatal bite, Amerasian detective Sonchai Jitplecheep sets out to avenge his death. Paired with a blonde FBI agent who provides sexual tension and acts as a Western foil for Sonchai's disarming mysticism, he follows strands of forensic and karmic evidence leading to a beguiling dark beauty, a high-powered jade dealer, Chinese businessmen, and Khmer Rouge thugs. In his second East-meets-West thriller (after The Last Six Million Seconds), Burdett evokes an intriguing and exotic Bangkok where hungry ghosts and capitalists throng the busy intersection of the eightfold path and the red-light district. The depiction of the occasional kinkiness and sadism of this world never seems gratuitous and is skillfully refracted through a highly original sleuth. The pace never flags, every page unfolding fresh mysteries of the psychological, cultural, metaphysical, and locked-room varieties. Highly recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/03.]-David Wright, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Read all 6 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you’ve blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won’t let you go. Read this book, savor the language–it’s the last–and the most compelling word in thrillers. — James Ellroy

Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down. — Carl Hiaasen