Sophia C. reviewed on 12/8/2009 + 289 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

Bangkok 8 packs enough punch to hit many types of literary taste receptors. It is foremost a hot mystery thriller, which begins with two Thai policemen trailing an American marine to his death by drug-crazed snake bites in a bolted-shut car. Having lost his partner, Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is on a mission to find the perpetrators and avenge his soul brother's death. Sonchai's devout Buddhist beliefs takes the story to another dimension, as his reflective meditations bring intuition into crime-solving, balanced with reason and technology supplied by the FBI, represented by the sleek blond Special Agent Jones. Even though he is probably the only cop not on the take, as the half-farang son of a former prostitute and long gone American serviceman he is a credible and amusing guide to this lush, exotic locale and its under-culture of drugs, sex, and other illicit trades. Finally, it is a deeply meditative social commentary on the West by realistically presenting Sonchai's and indeed all of Thailand's on-the-ground modus operandi as not necessarily an inferior but different way of going about life, written in vivid and accessible language. So dig in.

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