Details
Synopsis
Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a deeply 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.
| Size | | Height: | 5.0 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 8.0 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "'Killing customers just isn't good for business.'"
Industry Reviews
"Another wacky, wild-side traipse through Thailand's fleshpots, eateries and spiritual havens....[A] wry, wise and wonderful romp."
Kirkus (04/01/2005)
"[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)
Publishers Weekly (04/25/2005)
"The atmosphere in BANGKOK TATTOO is no less humidly and richly imagined...than in BANGKOK 8."
New York Times Book Review - Charles Taylor (06/05/2005)
"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."
Salon - Laura Miller (06/06/2005)
"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."
"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."
Literary Review - Philip Oakes (08/01/2005)
"[O]utrageous yet bizarrely tender....The plot is incredibly elaborate, but it doesn't faze Sonchai, who reacts to so many opposing ideas dancing madly on the head of the same pin with a kind of Buddhist calm."
Booklist - Bill Ott (05/01/2005)
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