Bangkok Tattoo - Tapa dura

Bangkok, rich in history and spirituality, crowded with temples, markets and canals, is also a city shrouded in shadows. Polluted, corrupt, infamous as the sex capital of the world, it is a place where wealth, poverty and unimaginable evil walk hand in hand. In District 8, the underbelly of Bangkok’s crime world, a dramatically mutilated body is found in a hotel bedroom. It looks bad: the corpse – who’s been flayed - is CIA. And it gets worse when the self-confessed murderer is the beautiful Chanya – the best ‘working girl’ at The Old Man’s Club, a brothel owned jointly by Sonchai’s mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn. Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell located in a southern Thai border-town where, since 9/11, the CIA has also had a covert presence. So far so good: but the truth will be harder to come by, and it will require Sonchai to find an ever more delicate balance between his ambition (western) and his Buddhism (eastern), while he runs the gamut of Bangkok’s drug-dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, even worse military generals, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart. Crowded with astonishing characters, redolent with the authentic, hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok, with needle-sharp observations about the clash of cultures when East meets West, this is a literary thriller like no other.

What the critics said about Bangkok 8: 'A cracking East meets West thriller introducing a half-Thai, half-American cop whose Buddhist beliefs are as important as his forensic skills. Terrific.' Observer ‘Impeccably researched . . . sometimes poetic, often exotic, and totally hardcore.’ Daily Mirror ‘A stunning thriller.Suspense at its best.’ Jeffery Deaver ‘One of the most startling and provocative mysteries I’ve read in years.’ Carl Hiaasen ‘A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you’ve been blasted to Mars in the grip of a demon who won’t let you go. Read this book!’James Ellroy ‘A thriller as exotic as it is enthralling, and as provocative as it is obscene.’ Harper’s Magazine ‘A genuine grown-up work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents . . . A tour de force.’ Washington Post