Amy Myers catches up with the British crime novelist
John Burdett’s Bangkok series first burst upon the crime reading world in 2003 with the publication of Bangkok 8. The fourth, The Godfather of Kathmandu,is now published in the UK (28 January 2010, Bantam Press, Transworld, £12.99).This remarkable quartet of crime novels, in which Western materialism comes face to face with the spiritual approach of the East, has won universal plaudits. In The Godfather of Kathmandu Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep investigates the horrific murder of a rich American, is caught between his boss Vikorn and Vikorn’s sworn enemy General Zinna, and is captivated, at a time of personal grief for himself, by the Buddhist path to enlightenment offered by a Tibetan lama in Kathmandu. Recommending Bangkok 8 highly in Shots Magazine, Ali Karim wrote: ‘It does really make you take a long deep breath, as its story is so fresh.’ Having read The Godfather of Kathmandu, I agree. I was left breathless, although I managed to recover in time when I was offered the privilege of interviewing its author. An unforgettable novel – go for it!
Q. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, who is the driving force of these novels, is memorable for far more than his powers of detection. He’s half-Asian, half Westerner, he treads the thin line between the law and crime with dexterity and juggles his career path with his spiritual Buddhist journey to the Far Shore. Was his original conception in your mind solely as a detective, from which his character then developed, or did you plan him as such a divided character at his conception?
A. I did not plan him at all. I think his Eurasian genes plus his mastery of the cultures of both East and West make him vulnerable to a kind of schizophrenia. It is not so much that he does not know who he is, but rather he could be almost anyone, depending on what language and culture he happens to be in at any particular moment.