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Detective Songchai Jitpleecheep was born during the Vietnam conflict, the love child of an american soldier and the Thai prostitute Nong. He has never met his father, who is now back in the US. Beside his police work Songchai runs the brothel The Old Man's Club together with Nong. His boss Colonel Vikorn is the biggest shareholder in the club.One evening the club's most popular working girl Chanya returns after having gone away with an American. As she walks through the bar she undresses and leaves her skimpy silver dress draped over a bar stool. It is soaked in blood and the blood fresh enough to drip down onto the floor. "I have done in him", Chanya states before disappearing into her room.
The American's hotel room offers an equally bloody sight; he has been castrated and the skin is missing from his whole back. Reluctant to lose one of their major money makers Colonel Vikorn invents a story that explains how Chanya killed the American in self defence.
But the American turns out to have been a CIA agent and in his attempts to make the evidence point to Al Qaeda Songchai ends up discovering the bizarre truth despite intervening in military drug smuggling and visiting a muslim favoured village in Southern Thailand.
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I have never been to Thailand, so I have no personal experiences with which to compare this book. John Burdett was born in Great Britain but lived and worked as a lawyer in Hong Kong for 12 years. Now he lives in France and Thailand and writes full time.
Despite the writer's origin the book is written from a Thai perspective; the text is often directed straight at the reader by the address "Farang" which I assume to be the Thai word for foreigner. One passage explains in detail to me, farang, the translation of the capital of Thailand's name and how it goes phonetically; nowhere can Bangkok be found. Concistently through the book the point is made that we cannot understand Thailand and its customs unless we can see beyond our own values and references.
The Thailand the book describes is a world where prostitution is an easy and honourable source of income that ensures the livelyhood of whole families, even whole villages. Songchai and most of the characters are Buddhists and as such most occupied with praising the Buddha and constantly aiming at balancing their karma, not deciding on each individual action based on concept as good or bad.
Accordingly Chanya calculates how she would amass 3 120 units of negative karma if she were to prostitute herself to put her sister through medical school. It would require the same number of medium-to-high healings by her sister to balance this, which should take no longer than a year or so. After that Chanya could dedicate the rest of her life to earn positive karma.
The whole book is written in a deceptively light-hearted tone, I am astounded and indignant as I read about police corruption, prostitution, child labour and drugs trade but at the same time I have to smile. Nothing seems to eminate from anything akin to evil; it is all about survival, business or love in combination with madness.
It took me a while to read this book, it was hard for me to step out of my own frame of reference and see the world through Songchai's eyes. But once I succeded it was well worth the effort. It is a refreshing read; a completely new environment and set of characters, and an intricate storyline. I was offered quite a few eye-openers and have thought a lot about how carefully you have to tread if you wish to change the world. Even if you have the best of intentions you always have to respect the traditions and values of others.
I recommend this book to anyone who believes themselves to have an open mind and is willing to take a somewhat immoral journey.
John Burdett has written the following novels:
Featuring Songchai Jitpleecheep
Bangkok 8 (2002)
Bangkok Tattoo (2005)
Bangkok Haunts (2007)
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