In frenzied Bangkok, a little karma, a lot of chaos
Bangkok Tattoo
By John Burdett
Knopf, 301 pp., $24
You may be relieved to know that the streets of Bangkok still brim with food stalls and happy-mellow call girls, that Police Colonel Vikorn remains as corrupt as a three-dollar bill, and that Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep still talks to the Buddha while he's on the clock. Sonchai's mom, a retired prostitute called Nong, is as shrewd as ever in her business pursuits (mostly trying to hustle aging Westerners, or farang, into her brothel with Viagra), and the city's District 8 still reels with dope dealers, weird crimes, tormented ex-military or intelligence men, and fast talk radio. A shocking mutilation scene opens our story, which veers with breakneck pace between detective-story convention and methamphetamine overkill. ''Bangkok Tattoo" is a lot like its predecessor, ''Bangkok 8," in other words, and so has moments of amusement and intelligence alongside hairpin narrative curves, ludicrous subplots, and talky excess that makes even the likable Sonchai seem tiresome after a while. There are the occasional footnotes of violence or creepiness: flayed corpses, pet spiders, a quick breakfast stop for a bag of fried insects. (Sonchai: ''For twenty minutes there is silence save for the snapping of legs and the squirting of guts.") Don't worry: Blink, and another CIA conspiracy or fortune-cookie cultural analysis pops up to distract you.
Welcome to farang John Burdett's Thailand, which he depicted to much folderol and success with his 2003 novel, ''Bangkok 8," hailed by some as a new benchmark in the modern thriller. A former lawyer based in Hong Kong who had written two previous novels, Burdett struck oil with ''Bangkok 8," partly because of his adept picture of a country poised between Internet cafes and Eastern religion. But it was the first-person narrative of the melancholy Buddhist detective that probably served as the real draw. Intent upon atoning for his sin of killing a drug dealer, Sonchai rejoined the police force after a year in a monastery and is now one of the few honest cops in the city: He's a tough guy who meditates, the son of a prostitute and an American soldier who's still longing for his dad, a good-natured but perpetual outsider who wears his heart on his sleeve but does best alone. Thus he appears to us as Gumshoe Harry dipped in chili sauce -- the iconic interloper meant to view the corrupt modern world with 20/20 vision, far enough removed to observe its ills, too modern and fey to do much about them.
Fair enough, but you, sir, are no Sam Spade -- or Adam Dalgliesh, for that matter, of whose moody inner struggles Sonchai would surely approve. Still, Sonchai is a companionable enough narrator, even if he does sometimes seem like a barely disguised cipher for Burdett's opinion. But the problem with both novels, this one far more so than its predecessor, is that the Buddhist detective's allure is overwhelmed and eventually buried by the landfill of Burdett's plots.
''Bangkok Tattoo" begins with one of Nong's finest employees, a prostitute named Chanya who loves her work, confessing to the castration and murder of a scary white guy: a client named Mitch Turner, who turns out to be CIA. To protect Chanya and Nong's business, Sonchai and the colonel start mopping up after her deed, until two of Turner's cowboy colleagues appear in search of answers. They try to steal a micro vault, or information chip, from Turner's apartment; the colonel tries to set up an old rival in a drug sting; a Muslim holy man from the south explains that Turner was spying on the Muslims. (They, in turn, were interested in scrutinizing him to understand the ''great howl of agony" at his center.) Chanya's diary, which Sonchai gets his hands on, reveals her life as a high-priced call girl in the States, where she went to stockpile assets to care for her family. It also gives us the goods on the tormented Turner, whose pet spiders were our first flag that all was not well within the bounds of his personality. Oh, and there's a dead junkie with eels in his belly, a transsexual with dreamy eyes who can talk high fashion, lots of carefree sex, and . . . did we mention that Sonchai has fallen in love with Chanya?
But let's not forget the tattoos; Burdett nearly did. Turner was flayed, and that little detail turns out to have plenty to do with needle and ink -- a shaggy-dog subplot with a couple of hints that finally unfolds near the end of the novel, sending what's left of the story over the cliff. Or, as they would say in TV land, that's when the novel jumps the shark. By the time Burdett introduces the real explanation for all this mayhem, even he seems weary of the whole thing. When Sonchai finds out about a new bad guy he has to locate -- a near-impossible feat in District 8 -- he introduces that twist with an immediate disclaimer: ''Never mind how I found him . . ."
''Bangkok Tattoo" is on occasion clever and engaging. It is also overwritten, wildly unorganized, and sometimes irritatingly arrogant. For all the depth of their characterization, the women might as well be blow-up dolls. What remains captivating is Burdett's darkly ironic portrait of Bangkok and Thai culture, with its global technology, its infusion of Western values, its half-hearted dance between Buddhist equanimity and modern frenzy. Sonchai himself has enough humanity, even in the midst of all this filler, that by the end of the novel we still care what happens to him -- care about the lost boy hidden within the tough detective. I suspect, for better or worse, he'll be back. The rest of it we can chalk up to another example of farang indulgence -- wild goose chases, misplaced ambitions, unquenchable thirsts. Great howl of agony, indeed.
Gail Caldwell is chief book critic of the Globe. She can be reached at caldwell@globe.com. 
