Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, and Bangkok Haunts

John Patrick Burdett (born July 24, 1951) is a British crime novelist. He is the bestselling author of Bangkok 8 and its sequels, Bangkok Tattoo and Bangkok Haunts.

Burdett is a former lawyer who lived and worked in Hong Kong for twelve years. For a time, he was employed by the Hong Kong Government. He later worked in private practice. After amassing a small fortune, Burdett decided to abandon law and pursue a career as a detective novelist.

Burdett's Bangkok series of crime novels, set in the city of their namesake, center on the philosophical Thai Buddhist detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, whose's meditative internal dialogues are something of a cross between Sherlock Holmes, Carl Jung, and the Buddha. Sonchai is a "leuk krung", or half-caste, the son of a former "rented-wife" and a "farang", or foreign, American GI father he never knew. With one foot in each culture (having spent much of his childhood in Europe) his differentness leaves him both unbribeable and a keen cultural anthropologist whose principles are as admirable as his insights, which more often than not, are both professionally useful and deliciously amusing.

The novels usually involve Thailand's international sex industry, for example, in the red-light district of Bangkok. (See for example Prostitution in Thailand.) Sexual matters are often at the center of the narrative, but the sexual descriptions are never gratuitously salacious, and the juxtaposition of often conflicting Thai and Western norms and mores (with an emphasis on the sexual) only adds to the cultural comedy.

Frequently, they contain bizarre crimes and cruel characters interwined with a wry sense of humour. Juxtaposed is the investigative non-chalance and Buddhist acceptance of an "arahant" detective who can earnestly meditate even in a Bangkok traffic-jam. Many popular shamanistic superstitions that carried over into Buddhism in Thailand like those surrounding past lives (reincarnation) and hungry ghosts feature heavily. While the devout detective's narration in the first-person present seems an admonition to deal with the horrors of Sonchai's world here and now in the present moment.

Burdett has expressed interest in moving beyond the crime/detective genre once his Bangkok series is complete.

Yes Farang, this is the series to read, and stay tuned for more info as it occurs.