Book description
Bangkok, rich in history and spirituality, crowded with temples,
markets and canals, is also a city shrouded in shadows. Polluted,
corrupt, infamous as the sex capital of the world, it is a place where
wealth, poverty and unimaginable evil walk hand in hand.
In District 8, the underbelly of Bangkok's crime world, a
dramatically mutilated body is found in a hotel bedroom. It looks bad:
the corpse - who's been flayed - is CIA. And it gets worse when the
self-confessed murderer is the beautiful Chanya - the best 'working
girl' at The Old Man's Club, a brothel owned jointly by Sonchai's
mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn. Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn
quickly concocts a cover-up that involves an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell
located in a southern Thai border-town where, since 9/11, the CIA has
also had a covert presence.
So far so good: but the truth will be harder to come by, and it will
require Sonchai to find an ever more delicate balance between his
ambition (western) and his Buddhism (eastern), while he runs the gamut
of Bangkok's drug-dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, even worse military
generals, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart.
Crowded with astonishing characters, redolent with the authentic,
hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok, with needle-sharp observations
about the clash of cultures when East meets West, this is a literary
thriller like no other.
John Burdett is a former lawyer who worked in Hong Kong until he
found his true vocation as a writer. An Englishman by birth, he has
lived in France and Spain, and is now back in the Far East.
His previous novel, Bangkok Eight, also features Sonchai
Jitpleecheep, and is available as a Corgi paperback.
