227. Bangkok Eight

Rating:  ☆☆☆

Recommended by:

Author:  John Burdett

Genre:  Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Foreign

317 pages, published June 3, 2003

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

Bangkok Eight is a mystery/thriller set in District Eight of modern day Thailand. When a charismatic Marine sergeant is murdered under a Bangkok bridge inside a bolted-shut Mercedes Benz, two of the witnesses are the only cops in the city not on the take.  After one is also murdered, his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep (a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.) sets a mission for himself to track down the killer and exact revenge.

 

Quotes 

“I don’t want enlightenment, I want him. Sorry Buddha, I loved him more than you.”

 

“The sound she is making is the sound hearts make after they’re in pieces and the fragments dissolve into the overwhelming sadness of the universe. The power to hear it may be the only privilege of the thoroughly dispossessed.”

 

“We do not look on death the way you do, farang. My closest colleagues grasp my arm and one or two embrace me. No one says sorry. Would you be sorry for a sunset?”

 

“The dharma teaches us the impermanence of all phenomena, but you cannot prepare yourself for the loss of the phenomenon you love more than yourself.”

 

My Take

I read Bangkok Eight in advance of trip to Thailand to get some local color and insight before departing.  Judged by that metric, the book delivered.  While uneven and slow in parts, on the whole Bangkok Eight provides some very interesting insights into a country I knew little about.  Recommended to those who are planning a trip to Thailand.