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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781400097067
ISBN number: 1400097061
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: June 10, 2008
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: June 10, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 11286
Studio: Vintage
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Product Description:
Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo, returns in this blistering novel.
Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok's District 8, but nothing like the snuff film he's just been sent anonymously. Furiously fast-paced and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts more than lives up to the smart and darkly funny originality of its predecessors.
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Rated by buyers -
and if you like Thai stories or want to learn more about Thailand in an engrossing and interesting well researched slice of Bangkok. This book won't dissappoint. Although it is probably the weakest of the three. Bangkok 8 had the best story line but Bangkok Tatoo was the best of the three for all around interesting.
Rated by buyers 
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Great story. I've spent a lot of time in Thailand and it brings back many memories. High suspense and well written.
Rated by buyers 
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John Burdett's "Bangkok 8" and "Bangkok Tattoo" introduced us to Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the cop behind those bright neon bookcovers.
Sonchai is your basic incorruptible and introspective half Thai Buddhist detective in Bangkok. Like a good son, he helps mom run a fairly undistinguished cathouse and generally keeps his hands off the help. A memorable guy in a chaotic, corrupt, and seemingly well-named city.
In "Haunts" Sonchai encounters a hooker who redefines femme fatale, vicious Khmer Rouge mercenaries, a slimey limey lawyer, some murderous elephants, a headcase FBI agent, an American high school teacher in way over his balding head, a drug-dealing Japanese filmmaker released from prison to shoot skin flicks, a bad guy billionaire, and a monk with multiple personalities who hangs out in Internet cafes. Back again are his charmingly corrupt boss Vikhorn, his now pregnant wife, and his pre-op transgendered partner. If you liked Fellini's Satryicon or the bar scene in Star Wars (I did), you will feel right at home.
And what is not to like about the human whitewater of Bangkok? Burdett loves it, as do two other lawyers I know who have retired there to write (hey, if the writer's block gets too tough, there is always high quality, low cost beaches, food, and sex -- so how can you lose?)
You can't -- which is why "Haunts" is a fun summer read, despite Burdett's irritating tendency to patronize westerners and non-Buddhists.
But the story is fantasy, not mystery. It is JK Rowling, not Michael Connelly -- Harry Potter, not Harry Bosch. Sonchai's occidental "intuition" conveniently leads him to the subsequent set of clues. He assumes that people share identical nightmares. Ghosts make random convenient appearances (and are captured on film by the local forensic pathologist, who finds this unexceptional in a cameo appearance as an otherwise normal human being). Our hero's climatic escape from flying demons, KR psychopaths, and elephants trained to torture is the equivalent of polyjuice potion -- a gimmmick that lets the author end the book by cheating his readers.
It's great stuff if you are twelve -- although most books for twelve year olds have fewer snuff flicks, porn kings, and hot sex with ghosts. "Haunts" is the Thai equivalent of a French movie -- perfect if you can live off of characters and scenery but a lot to swallow if you care about the coherence of the story.
Rated by buyers -
Burdett takes the reader on a fascinating tour of Bangkok, both live Bangkok and dead Bangkok. In other words, a lot of this book takes place on the "other side", which is not to imply this is a science fiction work. No, Burdett carefully and skillfully weaves Buddhist beliefs about the afterlife into his gritty account of earthly Bangkok. The plot is creatively complex and rich in personalities and setting. So many worlds come together here: the living and the dead, the East and the West, the honest and the dishonest...and so on. I found the ending a little contrived -- you could see where this book would end pages in advance -- but there were many surprises along the way to that ending. A fascinating book.
Rated by buyers -
My wife is Thai and I've been to Bangkok about seven times, so I really enjoy John Burdett's books. Like no other author, he captures the bizarreness and incongruities of Thai culture -- the sex-traffic scene versus buddhist morality; corruption versus ethics; ancient superstitions versus modern technological development; eastern way-of-thinking versus western.
Burdett's got a great, understated sense of humour in explaining Thai culture to Westerners. His plots are interesting, his books keep the reader engrossed, he sets out a mystery in the very first chapter and the reader watches the main character solve the crime, with several interesting detours along the way. This book is consistent with the other "Bangkok" books in those regards.
But I've never liked the endings of any of his books, and this one is particularly hard to take. I can't go into further details without spoiling the ending, but I doubt if most readers will find it either plausible or satisfying. And, even overcoming some logistical problems, the "revenge theme" doesn't really make any sense once the reader learns all the details about the crime that the hero is trying to solve.
Also, the hero goes down some rabbit trails here that don't make any sense and don't really move the plot along. It's as if Burdett needed some "filler" material to add a few pages to the book, so he creates some interesting characters for the hero to investigate, then quickly discards them in order to get back to the main plot.
Finally, there's some mysticism here that I don't really think fits in a detective novel. Yes, it's true that many (if not most) Thais believe in ghosts and I've known several who claim to have seen and even conversed with ghosts, but it doesn't mean that they actually exist. It would be one thing if this were a Stephen King novel, but it's not.
So, over all, it's an enjoyable book with great insight into Thai culture but a flawed ending.
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