The excuse for all this is that the central character, Mike, a journalist of little talent, has been sent to Bangkok to chase a dubious drug-trafficking story. He gets involved with a Thai woman named Tweety only to inadvertently cause her death. (It’s terribly difficult to feel sad about the death of a two-dimensional character named Tweety.) This could all be fascinating, but not when it includes so many clich?s from Bangkok noir.

Mid-book, however, everything changes; we are no longer watching a blushing young man walk into elephant traps in the exotic East. We are back in McDonell’s hometown, where he needs no guide book and the clich?s fall away. His treatment of the 9/11 catastrophe is masterly. He has telling detail at his fingertips, and the city constitutes a kind of internal map of his soul.

Alas, the metamorphosis is not enough to save the novel. The plot is no more than a desperate attempt to weld together two very different books. The second one shows promise, but it is only a hundred-odd pages long. If McDonell is planning his third novel, as I am sure he is, then he should adapt and adopt an ancient mantra: Stay West, young man. ?

John Burdett is the author of “Bangkok 8″ and “Bangkok Tattoo”.

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