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DCO Thailand

Waterstone's

Bangkok Tattoo
John Burdett

From the author of the best seller Bangkok 8, a head-spinning new novel that puts us back in the company of the inimitable Royal Thai Police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. We return to District 8 — the underbelly of Bangkok’s underworld — where a dramatically mutilated dead body is found. It’s bad: he was CIA. It gets worse: the murderer appears to be Chanya, a tough, sweet working girl who’s the highest earner at The Old Man’s Club, jointly owned by Sonchai’s mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn.

Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves Al Qaeda and Thailand’s porous southern border where, since 9/11, the CIA has been an obviously covert presence. But the truth will be harder to come by, and it will require Sonchai to find an ever-more-delicate balance between his ambition and his Buddhism, while running the gamut of Bangkok’s drug dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, worse military, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart (Chanya!) — most of which he can handle. But even Sonchai is not prepared for what he discovers at the end of his investigation.

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if this book is just half as good as bangkok 8 then its going to be a real thriller

Picked it up at Heathrow in the large paper back style.

Just as Bangkok 8 it has an original story, which doesn't give any clues away until the last few pages but then the ending is not the strong part of the book.
i like how the author has developed the characters more and he has done well with linking them back to Bangkok 8.

It is well written and sometimes hard to be remember that the writer is not Thai.

The chapters relating to the USA are very interesting and the amount of different characters and locations Burdett uses and describes make the book one that can be easily read in one sitting

For someone who knows Thailand this book is very enjoyable. I wonder how Bangkok 8 and this book would be for someone who doesn't know Thailand much as Burdett’s language can sometimes seem a bit strange - for example when he talks to the reader calling us 'farang' as he did in Bangkok 8.

Overall a great book, but for me just not as good as Bangkok 8.

Recommended Summer reading at Salon.com!

Bangkok Tattoo

review here by Ron Gluckman