ISBN: 1400040450
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 3
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Summary: Watch your step in Krung Thep
Sometimes a writer, just like an actor or athlete, reads to many of his own reviews and begins to believe them. Burdett has a talent for the understated satire, that the British do so well. The problem is that sometimes, the wrong person is editing a book and lets satire go over the line to clownishness.
Unlike Bangkok 8, where Burdett showed the patients and soft touch of an artist (say a Van Gogh), in Bangkok Tattoo he's more like a housepainter trying to cover up a badly damaged wall. IMHO he doesn't understand that sometimes less is more.
The stories here are almost inconsequential and he keeps trying to break through the 'fourth wall' like Groucho Marx winking at the audience. This work so much reminds me of Chevy Chase after he left SNL; in his subsequent movies, he spent way to much time mugging at the camera (like he was saying: Look how funny I am).
Burdett spends a lot of time saying look how cynical, but funny and dryly witty I can be. Oh Yeah! For a Brit ex-pat he seems to take a great relish in making fun of the American's. I guess that in the part of Bangkok he hangs out in there aren't any drunken Brits, Aussies or Kiwis...wonder which part that is?
John..go back and read the first book before you think of writing a third...and don't.
Summary: Stale Storytelling
I picked up Burdett's first thriller, Bangkok 8, prior to a trip to Thailand and found it brimming with atmosphere but somewhat disappointing in the plot department and marred by a painfully bad ending. This sequel is similarly atmospheric and similarly disappointing. We are reintroduced to Thai police officer Sonchai Jitpleecheep as he manages his mother's bar/brothel on Bangkok's legendary Soi Cowboy. The establishment -- which caters to aging Westerners and opened in the previous book -- has not been the golden goose his mother hoped for and is barely breaking even. So when the joint's top earner, Chanya, is found covered in blood in a nearby hotel room with a castrated and flayed American, Sonchai and his boss (who is also part owner of the brothel), police Col. Vikorn, move quickly to remedy the situation. Here, the murder "mystery" framework is an excellent vehicle for conveying just how different the Thai culture is from the West. They know the woman couldn't have committed the murder because the desecration of the corpse just isn't in line with Thai psychology, but their efforts aren't directed at solving the murder so much as deflecting any attention from it.
Vikorn quickly decides to sweep the matter under the rug and enlists Sonchai's help in creating a semi-plausible "self-defense" confession for the girl and a quick and clean disposal of the body. Unfortunately, it turns out the American was a CIA agent working in Thailand's southern provinces, keeping an eye out for extremist Muslims. Soon CIA agents show up looking for their missing man and Sonchai is sent South, ostensibly to get the lay of the land and try and figure out if maybe al-Qaeda is somehow involved. This is all pretty absurd (particularly the notion that the CIA would send a blond musclehead to lurk in provincial Muslim towns), but it does provide the chance to see a different part of Thailand.
However this is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are plenty of other subplots revolving around Sonchai. Most dangerous of these is the increasingly lethal feud between Vikorn and his army nemesis, General Zinna, for control of a portion of the heroin trade. Then there is the question of Chanya's past, which includes a year in the United States, and how that might relate to the CIA agent's murder. There is also the question of Sonchai's feelings for Chanya -- are they love or lust? And then there's Sonchai's long-lost father, an American GI whom he's never met and is making plans to come to Thailand for a visit. And lets not forget the mysterious Japanese master tattooist... There's simply far too much going on, and the book lurches around awkwardly from storyline to storyline and major elements (such as Vikorn's feud with Zinna) simply disappear at times.
In addition to keeping track of all these threads, one also has to buy into Sonchai's ability to see people's past lives when he first meets them, and his obtaining clues through dreams of his dead partner. These elements end up feeling like more of an unnecessary gimmick than anything else. Another somewhat awkward device is the use of direct address to the reader by Sonchai, which really takes one out of the moment, as well as a pervasive sneering tone toward "farangs" (ie. foreigners). This gets old fast, and it reads like some kind of overcompensation by farang author Burdett, as Sonchai paints all Westerns as bumbling, soulless idiots.
Ultimately, one wishes that Burdett had concentrated on one or two storylines and worked at making them plausible. The rivalry between Vikorn and Zinna, for example, could have made a great plot all on its own. Instead it gets lost in the shuffle and very perfunctorily resolved. Perhaps worst of all was the confirmation of my suspicion that the motive behind the murder of the CIA man was a heavily recycled one. It's actually a plot I've come across THREE TIMES previously: first in Roald Dahl's short story "Skin", then in a Akimitsu Takagi's Japanese crime novel "The Tattoo Murder Case", and lastly, in a recent German film called "Tattoo."
What was fresh in Bangkok 8 has grown stale here. Yes, there's still good Thai atmosphere, but that's about it -- and much of it is the same as the previous book. The plotting is muddled, the pacing is terrible and the overall effect is more yawn-inducing than thrilling. I don't think I'll be back for another visit to Sonchai's Bangkok.
Summary: Not a patch on Bangkok 8
Unfortunately Bangkok Tattoo is nowhere as good as its prequel, although still worth picking up if you enjoyed the previous book by John Burdett. A lot of what set Bangkok 8 apart from others of its ilk has been repeated here, and that is one of the problems with this book. In Bangkok 8 the lead character's Buddhist faith, and habit of addressing himself directly to the reader, didn't come across as being contrived - this is not the case in Bangkok Tattoo. Time and time again, Sonchai would address the farang, waffle pointlessly about this and that and Buddhist believings and only serves to slow down the plot.
And the plot is the other issue with the book. It is very much a stop and start affair, and a major thread in the plot, a drug war between Club owner and Sonchai's police boss Colonel Vikorn and army General Zinna, at one point suddenly comes to a screaming halt in the middle of the book and only is clumsily and unsatisfactorily resolved in the final chapters of the book. The whole thread of this story comes across very much like needless padding, as if the author decided he needed to add some pages to bulk out the novel.
The main plot, involving the brutal murder of an US intelligence operative, is also somewhat of a miss-mash. It begins promisingly enough with the promise of Muslim intrigue and involvement in the murder, and the CIA also becomes involved but when the plotline is resolved, the protagnist seemingly comes out of left field, and their movativation for murders seem random and ultimately pointless.
What is still good about Bangkok Tattoo is that once again, John Burdett has created some very interesting characters, from the Sonchai the Thai cop and Vikorn his boss, to Chanya the Thai hooker with a heart suspected of murder, to the CIA operatives, to the Muslim iman and his son fearing a holy war should his followers be accused of the murder of the CIA operative. Mitch, whose murder instigates the whole story, descends into a hole of drink and drug addled madness, his slide into oblivion well portrayed by the author. Most of all, Burdett has made the sleazy side of Bangkok city, with its sex trade very much a character in its own right.
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