John Burdett

• Born: July 24, 1951
• Place of Birth: North London, England

TYPES OF PLOT: Police procedural; thriller; courtroom drama

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Sonchai Jitpleecheep, 2003-

Contribution

In his writings, John Burdett gives the mystery world a unique detective working in a fresh literary setting. After demonstrating his talents for characterization, sharp dialogue, complex plotting, dark wit, and keen observation in writing his debut work, the courtroom drama-thriller A Personal History of Thirst (1996), he exploited an event of worldwide proportions for his second novel. The Last Six Million Seconds (1997) is centered on the impending transfer of power in Hong Kong from British to Chinese hands. As he had practiced law in Hong Kong for twelve years leading up to the takeover, his choice of subject matter was no surprise. Although Southeast Asia, a vibrant, booming corner of the world, fascinated Burdett, Hong Kong was a creative dead end because the local film industry, led by the likes of John Woo and Jackie Chan, had already made the sights and sounds of the city familiar to an international audience. So Burdett, after traveling widely in search of the perfect setting, selected a lesser-known though equally exotic and colorful setting for his next novels, moving the action a thousand miles south and west to the virgin territory—in the literary sense—of Bangkok. It was a wise choice as he was already acquainted with Bangkok from frequent recreational trips. Once the location was settled, Burdett immersed himself in the culture, history, and geography of his adopted country.

Burdett’s firsthand research and his personal experiences in dealing professionally with ethnically diverse individuals involved in a wide spectrum of criminal behavior show to good advantage in his Sonchai novels. He skillfully engages all of the readers’ senses in describing the intricacies and attitudes of Bangkok society, much of which revolves around the world’s most active and open sex trade. He brings to life intriguing characters who are engaged directly or peripherally with the sex industry. His hero, an observant, introspective, hard-boiled detective slightly softened with the pacifist tenets of Buddhism and susceptible to all the temptations that surround him, is likable despite his many faults. All these qualities have brought Burdett a warm reception from readers and critics alike, though acceptance of the Sonchai novels in the United States has been slower than in other parts of the world.

Biography

John Burnett was born on July 24, 1951, in north London, the son of police officer Frank Burdett and seamstress Eva Burdett. Interested in writing from his early teens, Burdett later turned to law as a means of earning a living.

He attended the University of Warwick, where he was particularly interested in the work of and , and graduated in 1973. He afterward earned a degree at the College of Law and qualified as a barrister, in which capacity he worked for a time in London, practicing family law, before being sent to the British colonies as a government attorney. Burdett practiced for ten years in the criminal courts of Hong Kong, then went into private practice, eventually becoming a partner in the prestigious law firm of Johnson, Stokes, and Master. Burdett married Laura Liguori in 1995, and the couple produced one daughter before divorcing.

While still employed as a lawyer, Burdett used his spare time to write his first novel, A Personal History of Thirst, a London-based love triangle between ambitious working-class lawyer James Knight, a man named Oliver Thirst whom Knight successfully defended on a charge of theft, and Daisy Smith, a woman who was romantically involved with both men and is accused of killing Thirst. Burdett’s second novel, The Last Six Million Seconds, was a thriller set in Hong Kong just before the Chinese takeover, in which half-Irish, half-Chinese detective Chan Siukai investigates a series of gruesome murders—the first salvo in a power struggle among various diverse factions including British diplomats, American mobsters, Chinese communists, and others to control Hong Kong after the transition of governments.

Although neither novel performed particularly well critically or commercially (though both were later adapted as audio recordings and have been optioned for film), Burdett resigned from the law firm to travel the world in search of an intriguing—and under-used—setting in which to base a series of mystery novels. After rejecting Morocco as a possible venue for his stories, Burdett selected Bangkok (which Thais call Krung Thep, the “city of angels”), where he had often vacationed while practicing law in Hong Kong. For research purposes, he traveled to a monastery for a two-week meditation course on Theravada Buddhism—the form practiced in Southeast Asia—and spent many hours in the city’s red-light district absorbing the atmosphere and befriending bar girls.

Burdett’s first novel set in Thailand, Bangkok Eight, appeared in 2003. The first of a series featuring detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a unique character who is equal parts hard-boiled, hip, and Buddhist—the novel was critically acclaimed for its original sleuth; its intriguing secondary characters; its detailed descriptions that give the flavor of an exotic, chaotic city unfamiliar to many readers; and for its incorporation of Asian culture and philosophy. The series continued with the publication of Bangkok Tattoo (2005), Bangkok Haunts (2007), The Godfather of Kathmandu (2010), Vulture Peak (2012), and The Bangkok Asset (2015). In addition to this series, Burdett also published Freedom Angel (2011) and Death Effect (2017).

Analysis

The groundwork for John Burdett’s critically acclaimed Sonchai Jitpleecheep mystery novels was laid in his second book, The Last Six Million Seconds. Like much of his later work, that novel is set in an exotic environment (Hong Kong), which allows for extensive sensual description. It deals with factual issues endemic to the region (the struggle for power among various factions in a time and place of political upheaval). It also features a detective of mixed blood (the half-Irish, half-Chinese protagonist, Inspector “Charlie” Chan Siukai) who brings a unique perspective to his investigation as he covers his culturally diverse territory.

Burdett has carried the strengths of The Last Six Million Seconds to his Sonchai novels, enhancing and deepening them. The first of the series, Bangkok Eight, is almost a sensory overload, a welter of pungent smells, strange sounds, foreign tastes, tactile textures as different as stone and silk, and sights captured as crisp as black-and-white snapshots, all of which contribute in capturing the atmosphere and frenetic pace of the Thai capital. Bangkok, though as bustling a metropolis as Hong Kong, has the sex industry at its heart and soul. Though this business is presented openly and without shame throughout the red-light district twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to an eager international customer base, the trade has dark and devious underpinnings. Associated with the sex industry is a full range of criminal behavior: brisk drug dealings, fierce battles over territory, sexual assaults, and perversions that are beyond the realm of social acceptance. Much of this criminal behavior leads to violence, resulting in deaths, which, if they occur in his district, Number 8, come to the attention of detective Sonchai, who works under the auspices of his commander, Colonel Vikorn.

A unique creation, Sonchai is a walking dichotomy. A Vietnam War-era product of the union between an anonymous American soldier and a young Thai prostitute, Sonchai embodies both Western brashness and Eastern circumspection. He has features that blend European and Thai and speaks English and Thai fluently, so he is simultaneously a native and an outcast. He is equally attracted to and repelled by women. He lives in simplicity and poverty, though he sometimes can access large sums of money. His noir outlook is darkness with light around the edges, thanks to Sonchai’s devotion to Buddhism. Though he may be forced to resort to physical violence, inwardly, he is in contemplation. He is a relatively incorruptible upholder of the law, yet he expediently violates certain provisions when necessary. To maintain alertness, Sonchai occasionally ingests yaa baa, a drug that is a combination of methamphetamine and fertilizer. To relax, he smokes ganja and sometimes drinks to excess. He accepts bribes, and he seeks personal vengeance. He is respectful of and contemptuous toward his superior, Vikorn, who has become wealthy and powerful through his long-term and unabashed commitment to corruption. Vikorn, recognizing Sonchai’s talent for deduction, allows the detective considerable leeway in conducting investigations, only stepping in when the sleuth infringes on the colonel’s under-the-table income or when dignitaries are involved, where diplomacy and an administrator’s capacity to negotiate would be useful.

Sonchai and Vikorn are well drawn, as are all characters, who speak in realistic and distinctive voices because of Burdett’s ear for the rhythm and cadence of speech. Bangkok Eight has a wide, diverse cast. Several Americans are slyly portrayed—the United States Embassy attaché Jack Nape (perhaps a pun on “jackanapes”?), his assistant Ted Rosen, and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Kimberly Jones, who is attracted to but flummoxed by Sonchai’s contradictory disposition. Another influential, wealthy American gem dealer and closet pervert, Sylvester Warren, is seen as haughty and condescending. Elijah Bradley, the older brother of the American soldier whose death at the novel's beginning precipitates the rest of the plot, is down to earth. A German former lover of Sonchai’s mother—whom Sonchai compassionately assists by smuggling money to him—Fritz von Staffen loses his racial superiority and his thick head of hair while serving a long sentence in a primitive Thai prison for drug smuggling. A central character is Fatima, a beautiful half-Black, half-Thai woman who started life as a boy but underwent complete gender reassignment to please a lover, unaware that she was being reshaped to match a particular vision in the mind of a murderer.

Later entries in the series also touch on the sex trade. Bangkok Tattoo is precipitated by the mutilation murder of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, suspected to be the work of a beautiful bar girl. Complications naturally ensue with appearances by American agents, officers of the Thai army, religious fundamentalists, Japanese gangsters, and tattoo artists. Likewise, Bangkok Haunts begins with a video depicting the ultimate perversion, eroticism that results in murder.

The voice of the Sonchai series is as distinctive as the setting and is the thread that binds the many seemingly unrelated pieces of the central puzzle together. Told in first-person present tense from Sonchai’s viewpoint as a half-Buddhist, the narrative incorporates seemingly fatalistic Eastern philosophy, hard-boiled sensibilities, modern realities, and cross-cultural beliefs and attitudes. The stories themselves are complex though rewarding, tales of revenge, corruption, greed, and lust in an unfamiliar environment where the Western temperament does not apply and the standard conventions of mystery, deduction, and a tidy, full resolution are constantly shattered.

Bangkok Eight

A fascinating, if challenging, novel, Bangkok Eight opens with a bang. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep and his partner—and soul brother in the Buddhist sense—Pichai Apiradee, are under orders from their commander, Colonel Vikorn. They are following William Bradley, a very large Black American soldier employed at the United States Embassy and suspected of being a major drug merchant, as he drives around the sprawling city in a Mercedes-Benz. The two police officers lose the soldier in the crush of traffic but, acting on a tip, locate the car under a bridge, where its door handles have been blocked with pieces of steel. When Sonchai and Pichai approach, a gigantic, drug-addled python is trying to swallow the American. The police officers unblock the doors, releasing an avalanche of drugged cobras, one of which bites Pichai in the eye, killing him as dead as the American.

The initial incident propels Sonchai, an intriguing, one-of-a-kind character, into a tangled investigation that involves many different parties—local authorities, the CIA, the FBI, drug dealers, merchants in stolen artwork, individuals engaged in some of the more bizarre aspects of the sex trade, and border men—in a case wherein various threads violently intersect.

Bangkok Haunts

The third in the series, Bangkok Haunts drags Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep—now living with a former prostitute pregnant with their child—into a case that begins with an anonymously received snuff film, in which Damrong, a woman the police officer knows, cares for, and erotically dreams about, has allegedly been killed. During his investigation, Sonchai involves young, attractive FBI agent Kimberly Jones and the sexual tension between the two increases as they join forces in following a twisting path toward the heart of the crime in pursuit of the perpetrator. Bangkok Haunts was critically well-received for its tangled plot, authentic dialogue, well-rounded characters, a fascinating setting, and multifaceted exploration of culture and crime.

Principal Series Characters:

• Sonchai Jitpleecheep is biracial, born during the Vietnam War, the product of a Thai prostitute and one of her customers, an American soldier on furlough in Bangkok. In his early thirties, he has straw-colored hair, a sharp nose, and is taller than the average Thai. A devout Buddhist—a believer in karma, meditation, reincarnation, and living in poverty—who is fluent in Thai, French, English, and American slang and speaks a smattering of other languages, Sonchai is a detective with the Bangkok police department. He works out of District 8, an area crammed with bars and sex clubs catering to both domestic visitors and an incredible variety of farang (foreign) tourists.
• Nong Jitpleecheep is Sonchai’s mother, once a beautiful young woman in great demand for her services as a prostitute. During her heyday, Nong traveled, accompanied by her beloved son, to live with foreign lovers in France, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere, and she also speaks several languages. Approaching fifty years of age, retired, and living in a small Thai village, Nong keeps current with modern technology via computer and cell phone and is up on the latest jargon. Contemptuous of the repressed Western attitude toward sex, so different from Thai openness and acceptance of sex as a natural part of life, she enters into a partnership with Colonel Vikorn in the operation of a brothel specifically for aging Westerners called the Old Man’s Club.
• Colonel Vikorn, a short, squat man in his sixties, is the police chief of District 8 and Sonchai’s boss. Like his counterparts from Bangkok’s other districts, he has grown wealthy and powerful by taking advantage of his position to become involved in a variety of questionable activities—the import and export of drugs, transactions in stolen works of art, and rake-offs from the sex trade—in a city where such what Westerners would view as corruption is a normal, everyday part of doing business.

Bibliography

Anderson, Patrick. The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction. Random House, 2007.

Burdett, John. Bangkok Haunts. Corsair, 2012.

Dunn, Adam. “Crime and Cops, Thai-Style.” Review of Bangkok Eight, by John Burdett. Publishers Weekly, vol. 250, no. 19, 12 May 2003, pp. 41-42.

Grossman, Lev. “If You Read Only One Mystery Novel This Summer . . . Oh, Who Are We Trying to Kid? There’s No Way We Could Choose Just One: Here Are Six of the Season’s Twistiest, Tautest, Most Tantalizing Tales of Sleuthery.” Review of Bangkok Eight, by John Burdett. Time, 11 Aug. 2003, pp. 58-60.

Hepner, Will. Review of The Last Six Million Seconds, by John Burdett. Library Journal, vol. 122, no. 2, Feb. 1997, p. 104.

"John Burdett." Penguin Random House, www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/47489/john-burdett. Accessed 20 July 2024.

Nathan, Paul. “Rights: Road from Hong Kong.” Publishers Weekly 243, no. 7, 22 Apr. 1996, p. 24.

Publishers Weekly. Review of A Personal History of Thirst, by John Burdett, vol. 242, no. 51, 18 Dec. 1995, p. 41.

Wright, David. Review of Bangkok Eight, by John Burdett. Library Journal, vol. 128, no. 10, 1 June 2003, p. 163.