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Sonchai Jitpleecheep is back. He is still working out of his mother's club, The Old Man's Club and as a police officer -- but he's not your average policeman. The Old Man's Club is a place for men to pick up call girls with a portion of the profit going to Sonchai and his mother. When Chanya, a working girl at the club, returns covered in blood from a visit to a john, Sonchai knows what needs to be done. He, along with his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn, create a cover story and work to hush the situation up. They both know that this was not a simple case of self-defense, but neither of them wants to begin an investigation into the death of an American. It turns out that the dead john was in fact a CIA agent in Thailand trying to block Al-Qaeda plans. The CIA will not allow his death to be merely covered up. They want to know what Chanya knows and why she really killed him. Vikorn and Sonchai work to create a new cover story, yet they also must begin a real investigation. With each step of the investigation, it seems that the death of the CIA agent is connected to Chanya's years in America and a tattoo artist rather than to Al-Qaeda. Until the various clues are put together in a convincing manner, the CIA will remain involved in police affairs. BANGKOK TATTOO is not your typical mystery. Burdett interweaves a murder mystery with cultural mores and Eastern philosophy. The majority of the main characters are Thai and are richly developed. The few American characters in the book are merely shadows and have no depth or individuality. This character delineation is rather ironic considering the fact that in fiction, Asian peoples were the shadowy figures while Anglo-Saxon characters were in the limelight. This role reversal shows how one country's social mores can seem strange and different to another. Sonchai is a complicated character with both a notion of justice -- in the American legal sense -- and a strong grasp of cultural mores. Sonchai is rather passive in his investigation so it seems almost as though he does not want to find the truth. This passivity in a police officer is unusual to a Western reader. We tend to like our cops to have both a sense of justice and a desire to carry it out. In fact, for all of the Thai characters in this book it is easier to cover up a crime rather than investigate it. Some of this is due to the fact that the police are corrupt but some of their willingness to ignore the crime is due to cultural and religious beliefs. The idea that justice is not necessary for everyone to continue with their lives is rather shocking to me. One of the reason many people read mysteries is because there is a sense of justice and retribution at the end of the book. In BANGKOK TATTOO, John Burdett attempts to show the reader that Western justice does not necessarily correct the underlying problem. In addition, this book shows that cultural constructions and mores can be different without one set of beliefs being wrong.
Reviewed by Sarah Dudley, May 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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