“Haunts” in this third of the Sonchai series acts as both noun and verb. Some haunts are places: the Old Man’s Club, the middle-class brothel owned by Sonchai and his hard-nosed entrepreneur mom; the Parthenon Club, a Thai “HiSo” (high society) sex club for the country’s “invisible men” who are normally beyond the reach of the law; and the government and capitalist aeries atop banks and other Bangkok skyscrapers — the apex of a nominally democratic society that remains in many ways stubbornly feudal.

Other “haunts” here are actually hauntings, as in the office of forensic pathologist Dr. Supatra. She proudly shows Sonchai and visiting FBI agent Kimberley Jones (introduced in “Bangkok Tattoo,” the previous book in the series) her digital video recording of the ghosts that fornicate in the morgue after she has left for the night. A puzzled Jones later asks Sonchai if he believes these ghosts to be ” real.” He replies, “Depends on what you mean by real.” It’s an answer that speaks volumes about the nature of reality in a society that is successfully modern — Thailand basically works — even though most Thais are animist Buddhists whose everyday lives are inhabited by ghosts and spirits that must be catered to with offerings, protective amulets and the like. When Jones labels Dr. Supatra “eccentric,” Sonchai explains, “All Thais are eccentric, Kimberley. Nobody colonized us. We don’t have much of a global norm to follow.” One complaint I heard in Thailand about Burdett’s series is that it fixates on the grotesque. In “Bangkok Tattoo,” an aggrieved transsexual Thai murders a black American Marine with drug-crazed cobras and a giant python. If anything, “Bangkok Haunts” is even more bizarre, with ghosts on the rampage and a uniquely grisly Thai form of execution called the elephant game.

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