International Herald Tribune - Thomas Fuller (Bangkok Haunts)
John Burdett: Detective writer at work in a seedy Bangkok district
As John Burdett ambles down a street packed with girly bars he passes two women in skimpy outfits waving their hands excitedly and calling out, “John! John!”
There are plenty of johns around - this is Soi Cowboy after all, one of the better-attended red-light districts in Bangkok - but the bar girls are waving to John with a capital “J,” their author-friend and confidant. Burdett waves back.
Burdett, a 56-year-old former lawyer, has spent the past seven years chatting up hundreds of bar girls - research! - as inspiration for his critically acclaimed trilogy, soon to be quartet, of gripping detective thrillers set in Bangkok’s netherworld.
“Bangkok 8,” published in 2003, has sold more than 100,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen BookScan, and foreign rights to the novel have been bought by publishers in 19 other countries. The sequel, “Bangkok Tattoo,” was released in 2005 and “Bangkok Haunts” was published in the United States this year and made it onto best-seller lists on the West Coast.
Among critics, Burdett has both ardent fans and skeptics. Laura Miller of Salon.com described “Bangkok 8″ as a “deliciously fresh breath of air in the often musty halls of detective fiction.” Michiko Kakutani, writing in The Times, bridled at the book’s “grotesque, voyeuristic scenes” and found the female characters in the book not “remotely credible.”
Reviewing “Bangkok Haunts,” also in The Times, Claudia La Rocco praised Burdett’s “witty, idiosyncratic” storytelling and wondered why Hollywood has yet to put any of his books on the screen. As it happens, Burdett is spending the latter half of October playing host to a scouting team from Millennium Films, who have an option on making “Bangkok 8″ into a movie.