John Burdett, Bangkok Haunts
Jul. 7th, 2011 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_divided
Very mixed feelings about this book. Possibly I'd feel differently if I'd read the proceeding book in this series, Bangkok Tattoo, instead of skipping straight here from Bangkok 8 (Bookoff! didn't have Tattoo). On some level, it's inevitable that the second, third, etc. books in an ongoing detective series aren't going to spend as much time on politics/scene-setting. They're going to have to re-introduce a lot of characters, and more of the prose is going to be dedicated to the "mystery" rather than to the philosophy of the author/character. More of an issue, though, is the fact that now that Songchai has something to live for, the book is really depressing. ^^; Bangkok 8 was freeing in a "protagonist doesn't actually care about anything other than getting revenge" kind of way. Now Songchai is invested: he's the main shareholder in a successful business, he is married and his wife is pregnant, and he has authority over at least one other cop (a M2F pre-op). What this means is that he is no longer separate and apart from the dysfunction of the world, as he was in the first book. He is now forced to confront, as part of his job, the fact that the whole world is run (in these books) by powerful psychos (always men) who buy whatever they want and then buy protection from the law.
Also a disturbing pattern emerges. This is a spoiler, so highlight to read: the plots always seem to revolve around Women Who Have Been Wronged, and we-the-readers are meant to understand both that their rage is totally justified, and that they must be stopped before they go too far in their quests for revenge.
Anyway, it's pretty upsetting. So I don't recommend you read it unless you either a) want to expand your mind to the evils of the universe, or b) desire to be confirmed in your thinking that the world really is that bad. Or unless you've got thick skin, XD. The new characters in this book are very strong, and they haunt me to this day, just as they canonically haunt the protagonist (hence the title).