In a survey two years ago the Ministry of Public Health counted 13,833 establishments in Thailand — bars, karaoke joints, guesthouses, massage parlors and coffee shops, among other places — where prostitutes and their clients met. Mr. Burdett’s books focus on the relatively small slice of this market that caters to Western tourists, a subculture of freelance bar girls who rarely work under pimps and who not infrequently marry their Western clients, blurring the line between pickup joints and sex for hire.

As part of his research he has traveled to the stilt houses in northeast Thailand, a Lao-speaking region known as Isaan that is the home turf of most of Bangkok’s bar girls. In his books we meet the families these women support financially.

“It’s the story of the country coming to the town,” Mr. Burdett said, peering down the length of Soi Cowboy where the neon lights are so bright they cast shadows. “Here in this street every single one of the girls you speak with will be from Isaan, will be originally a rice farmer.”

In his writing and in his life Mr. Burdett is comfortable around the Isaan migrants. He can name the different types of fried insects they like to eat: crickets, grasshoppers, silkworms, scorpions. He describes his companion, Nit, to whom “Bangkok Haunts” is dedicated, as an “extreme country girl.”

Mr. Burdett too is from a humble background, at least by the standards of his native England. The son of a London policeman, he traces his family back through carpenters and stonemasons on the eastern outskirts of London. There’s scant trace of a cockney accent to his speech, but the class consciousness and tinges of resentment of Britain’s stratified society remain; he no longer considers England home.

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