Bangkok 8

The crime takes place near the Sukhumvit BTS station — a US Marine dead in circumstances involving a rare black cobra and a locked car. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep works the case from a station near Pat Pong, and Burdett uses the investigation to move through layers of Bangkok that most crime fiction ignores: the amulet markets near Wat Mahathat, the spirit houses outside office towers, the economic logic of the Nana Plaza bars. Sonchai's Buddhism is not decorative — it shapes how he understands the killing and the city around it.