Windows To The World

Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police is quite a character. He is called to investigate the death of an American CIA agent in a seedy hotel room. It was murder and a brutal violent one at that.


The murder comes at a time not that long after 9/11 and thus the death of any American is automatically assumed to be a terrorist killing with Al Qaeda at the bottom of it. Sonchai and his boss the Machiavellian Col. Vikorn are willing to the let the investigation to lead in that direction while they find the real killer.


On one occasion Sonchai wants to keep two additional CIA men off the scent and he calls out to them playing the role of a man in the street. at first he can decide on an accent because he can do British and American 'generally one uses Brit when talking to an American and vice versa: the two cultures seem to intimidate each other quite well. On instinct,though, I use American with Enthusiastic Immigrant coloring and in a flash they decide I have Green Card written all over me: obviously I'm the best they can hope for down here.'


Burdett pokes fun at the West as well as the East  and he explains quite bit about the areas including  how all religions interact in Thailand.


It had been quite a while since I read the first in this series, but I am looking forward to the next.