Review
The bad guys in John Burdett's mysteries are relatively easy to
spot - despite
many a twist and turn, the reader will probably identify the culprit before Sonchai
does, but the mystery is not the reason you'd want to be reading
Bangkok 8
and
Bangkok Tattoo anyway. The reason to read them is to encounter a
whole new culture and an entirely different way of thinking - a culture so
different to what most of us know that it might as well be a parallel universe -
a place where things run smoothly because of, not despite of, the corruption;
and old-timers look back on the Vietnam War as the good old days.
The strength of the series comes not only from the setting but Burdett's
chief protagonist - Sonchai, probably the only policeman in town who doesn't
take bribes, is a Buddhist whose investigative methods include dream messages
from a...
Beyond the Book
At the age of 50
John Burdett gave up his life as a partner in a premier
law firm with a luxury apartment on "The Peak" in Hong Kong, sold his worldly
possessions and set out to try his hand at what he'd wanted to do all along -
write books. He is now about 55 and the author of four books including the
two Bangkok thrillers starring Sonchai Jitpleecheep. He was born in North
London, his father was a policeman, his mother a seamstress - and writing was
obviously in his blood from an early age - when he was about 8 his teacher asked
him to write a few sentences about himself, he responded with a
20-page document!
He read literature at the University of Warwick, on
graduating in 1973 he considered trying to make his living as a writer...
