Product Description

Sonchai Jitpleecheep—the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo—returns in this blistering new novel.

Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok’s District 8, but nothing like the video he’s just been sent anonymously: “Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species. I am watching one right now.”

He’s watching a snuff film. And the person dying before his disbelieving eyes is Damrong—a woman he once loved obsessively and, now it becomes clear, endlessly. And there is something more: something at the end of the film that leaves Sonchai both figuratively and literally haunted.

While his investigation will lead him through the office of the ever-scheming police captain, Vikorn (“Don’t spoil a great case with too much perfectionism,” he advises Sonchai); in and out of the influence of a perhaps psychotic wandering monk; and eventually into the gilded rooms of the most exclusive men’s club in Bangkok (whose members will do anything to protect their identities, and to explore their most secret fantasies), it also leads him to his own simple bedroom where he sleeps next to his pregnant wife while his dreams deliver him up to Damrong . . .

Ferociously smart and funny, furiously fast-paced, and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts does exactly that from first page to last.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #253010 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-05
• Released on: 2007-06-05
• Format: Deckle Edge
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. At the start of Burdett's superb third mystery-thriller to feature Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep (after Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo), Jitpleecheep shows old friend Kimberley Jones, an American FBI agent, a vicious snuff film he's received depicting the murder of an ex-lover of his named Damrong. Jitpleecheep and Jones maintain their complex platonic relationship as, helped by Jitpleecheep's assistant Lek, they pursue Damrong's killers. The trail leads them to an important banker, an American teacher, a Buddhist and an exclusive men's club called the Parthenon. Jitpleecheep, who now lives with Chanya, a former prostitute pregnant with his child, is visited in an erotic way by Damrong's ghost, while his corrupt superior, police colonel Vikorn, orders Jitpleecheep to help start a porn film business. Expertly juggling elements that in lesser hands would become confused or hackneyed, Burdett has created a haunting, powerful story that transcends genre. 75,000 first printing; 6-city author tour. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the hero of Burdett’s Bangkok-based thrillers, is a unique police detective. A Buddhist as closely attuned to karma as to crime, Sonchai is profoundly aware that the latter is only an expression of the former, and, accordingly, he finds answers in places that logic-hampered Westerners would never know to look. In his third adventure to date, a murdered prostitute proves to be—even more in death than she was in life—a femme fatale of special magnitude. As in previous episodes, the pleasures derive less from Burdett’s baroque plotting (in this case including former Khmer Rouge hired killers, a pornography ring debased even by Bangkok standards, and a death by torture involving elephants) than from the vivid portrait he paints of contemporary Thai life and mores.
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From Bookmarks Magazine
John Burdett, a British writer living in Asia, adds another intriguing mystery/noir novel to the genre with Bangkok Haunts. Like its two predecessors, the novel melds Eastern and Western culture while taking readers on a wild ride through Bangkok's seamy underworld, where morality takes on shades of gray. "Imagine a Conrad novel transformed into a video game," notes the Boston Globe, replete with all of the successful clichés of the genre, including fast-paced action and heart-turning plots. Sonchai becomes deeper and more intelligent with each novel, as do Burdett's portrayals of a city where ambiguity reigns. A less-than-convincing ending and some stock characters bothered a few critics, but overall, Bangkok Haunts is a compelling, worthwhile read.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Another ride through the amazing mind of Detective Jitpleecheep
The third is the best, as John Burdett returns us to Bangkok and inside the mind of Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep in this followup to two previous journeys of the extraordinary kind.

The same circle of characters is here, his mother who runs the prostitute pick-up bar; his boss, Col. Vikorn of the Royal Thai Police, also a part owner of the bar, and his female FBI friend who arrives from the US to help solve the crime. They are merely props this time to the story of Sonchai's love affair with Damrong and her demise. Sonchai's continuing erotic experiences with her spirit after death drives him all over Bangkok and to Cambodia a couple of times in pursuit of the killers.

Burdett weaves another story of incredible breadth and depth, a mystery based on sex, enlightenment, some Buddhist thoughts, and pure shock to the conventional Western mind. It is so alien, most times, to American thought and Judaic-Christian morality, that this becomes a fantasy travelling in an eroticized fun house.

Although this is best of the series, you might enjoy it better after starting at the beginning, as the character development builds in several directions, especially with regards to his former assistant and his new one, a transsexual soon to undergo the knife.

The Western morality tale is fairly conventional, as the good guys win; but the Eastern morality is not so certain, did the good guys really win?

Excellent crime fiction
This is a revenge tragedy par excellence. I have not read any of the previous novels by Burdett about this Thai detective. I almost did not get beyond the first chapter of this one after I discovered that the crime involved a snuff movie. I do not enjoy anything pornographic or gruesome. But this was not like that at all. In fact, the tactful way the author kept the details of the movie off stage at first kept me reading, and once I was into the plot I was mesmerized. You do finally get most of the details, but he doesn't dwell on them, primarily because the narrator is so appalled by the thing. It is a good strategy. What is so clever here is the way he is able to weave the supernatural into the story and still keep it real and plausible. The final scene where Damrong wreaks her revenge is just breathtaking.

John Burdett continues to satisfy
Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a member of the Royal Thai Police force, is perhaps the only Bangkok cop not on the take in one of the most corrupt police departments in Southeast Asia. The Buddhist monk son of an infamous Thai madam and a Vietnam-era American soldier is detective fiction's most complex cop, as enigmatic and exotic as his nearly unpronounceable name. We john met the multicultural Sonchai in BANGKOK 8 and BANGKOK TATTOO, John Burdett's two bestselling novels that so vibrantly bring to life one of the world's oldest and most fascinating cultures.

In this third installment, Sonchai has settled down in domestic happiness with his pregnant girlfriend in his modest Bangkok apartment. He finds on his doorstep a hand-addressed package. In it is a snuff porn film starring Damrong, a well-known prostitute who once worked in his mother's Cowboy District brothel, with whom he had carried on a brief dalliance. When he checks on her whereabouts, he discovers she is missing and comes to the realization that the killing was not an act --- the murder portrayed in the film was genuine and performed live in front of the cameras.

Damrong's ghost begins to haunt Sonchai's dreams as he launches an investigation into the identity of the film's producers. Over the objections of his superior, General Vikorn, he calls on his FBI colleague, American Kimberley Jones, for help after he learns that she is in Thailand following a lead on the growing number of snuff films being produced in the increasingly lucrative Southeast Asian sex trade. Together they hunt down the highly placed officials and businessmen at the top of a billion-dollar porn industry.

Sonchai's relationship with General Vikorn, who is the epitome of elegant corruption with a penchant for exquisite art collections and high living, is a study in Sonchai's ability to adapt his stringent Buddhist faith and its karmic effects to the harsh realities of crime fighting.

BANGKOK HAUNTS is the darkest of the three novels, which all provide a fascinating portrayal of modern life in Thailand. The clash between East and West is nowhere more deftly portrayed than by Burdett, whose longtime residency in this multicultural society provides him with the background for vivid authenticity in his literate portrayal of its people. The reader is treated to a splendid, intricately plotted thriller replete with the sounds, smells, cuisine and fascinating examination of Buddhism that is at the core of everyday Thai life.

Newly arrived among the venerable handful of literary detective mystery writers, such as James Lee Burke, P.D. James and Elizabeth George, John Burdett continues to satisfy with a series character who grows with each page-turning novel.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea