Bangkok Haunts

The third Sonchai Jitpleecheep novel opens at a crime scene off Silom Road — a woman murdered on film — and sends the detective through entertainment districts that operate in plain sight between the towers of Bangkok's financial center. Burdett is not interested in sanitizing the city; the Patpong bars, the police corruption, the informal economy that runs alongside and through the official one are all named precisely. What distinguishes this series from standard crime fiction is Sonchai's refusal to separate the city's market appetites from its devotional life: the Buddhist temple and the bar share the same block, the same patrons.