Surprisingly enough, this does not detract significantly from the suspense. There are a couple too many conversations where Sonchai receives information in a helpful monologue from one of the many memorable characters who cross the pages. Reality is subtly shifted from the first sentence on the first page the final satisfying, striking image of the novel.Īs a genre mystery, 'Bangkok 8' occasionally gets a little flat-footed. He conveys the extremities of life in Thailand as easily as he conveys the immanency of the spiritual world. Ghosts, disembodied souls, and other phenomena we would consider supernatural are matter-of-fact parts of his everyday experience. 'Bangkok 8' is more a novel of magic realism than many that claim the genre. Sonchai's story is fluid, lyrical, and surreal to the average western reader. Burdett utterly succeeds in capturing the peculiar worldview of his Buddhist protagonist, the son of a Bangkok whore and an unknown, unnamed American soldier. Sonchai's first-person narration, as rendered by Burdett, is remarkably readable and highly enjoyable. To do so, he will have to solve a case that seems unsolvable. When they open the car door to find a scene of reptilian horror, Pichai is killed, and Sonchai vows to kill the person responsible for Pichai's death. Sonchai and Pichai are outcasts, and problems tolerable only because their other skills compensate for their honesty. Corruption is the default in Bangkok, and it makes the police department run rather smoothly and well. Unlike all others, they refuse to take bribes they are arhat cops, saints in training. They are the only two honest cops in Bangkok District 8. Sonchai and Pichai, his cop-partner and Buddhist soul-mate, are the first on-scene when a US Marine Sergeant is killed in the back seat of a Mercedes by snakes on speed. 'Bangkok 8' isn't concerned so much with who did what and why, but rather how such a radically alien worldview could exist so comfortably alongside our world of unbridled capitalistic materialism.

Though it's set in the Thailand in the present day, we've seen many a science fiction world that seems more familiar than the real world as viewed by Sonchai Jipleecheep.

Sonchai's first person narration will culture-shock the reader throughout the narrative. The narrator tells the story from a perspective that is distinctly alien to most who will read the novel, that of a devout Buddhist. Dick's 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' As in many science fiction novels, the reader is plunged without preparation into a culture that is thoroughly unfamiliar. In fact, Burdett's story of an exotic milieu and an alien worldview has much in common with 'Blade Runner', the filmed version of Philip K.

'This isn't a whodunit, is it?' narrator Sonchai Jitpleecheep asks the reader nearly two-thirds of the way through John Burdett's fine novel 'Bangkok 8'.

Mystery General Fiction Horror Science Fiction John Burdett Bangkok 8 Reviewed by Rick Kleffel

Bangkok eight book