Sunday 24 June 2007
Crime
Jerry Bauer/Random House
John Burdett
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?Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species,? this devout Buddhist observes. ?I am watching one right now.? To add to his despair, the woman being strangled in the film is Damrong, a prostitute who was the love of his life when she worked in the Old Man?s Club, the brothel Sonchai operates with his mother. Like others who succumbed to Damrong’s charms, he’s still in thrall to this fascinating creature, who returns in spirit as a sexually voracious wraith who will continue to haunt him if he doesn’t bring her killer to justice ? and do something about this new development in the city?s notorious pornography industry. Daunting enough, the task is complicated by his cheerfully corrupt superior?s eagerness to branch out from his methamphetamine business by getting into the porn racket.
The ambiguous moral hemisphere Sonchai inhabits can be downright dizzying, but since he observes the rites and rituals of his native culture as conscientiously as he consults a professional colleague from the F.B.I., this self-described half-caste is well positioned to negotiate all paths to enlightenment. Girding himself to outwit a vengeful ghost or a hired killer comes as naturally as offering good-luck lotus blossoms to the Buddha above the cash register at the family brothel.
?You live in a magic-ravaged land,? Sonchai’s F.B.I. contact tells him. But the wonder of Burdett’s hallucinatory brand of Southeast Asian magic ? which puts his novels in range of the fabulous Yellowthread Street procedurals William Marshall set in Hong Kong and of Colin Cotterill?s fanciful mysteries featuring the Laotian coroner-sleuth Dr. Siri Paiboun ; is that this spooky stuff is manifested in a real world governed by what Sonchai calls “functional barbarism.” The author, who practiced criminal law in Asia and clearly knows his territory, has a fine skill for distilling the morbid beauty (not to mention the grotesque humor) in scenes of everyday misery. But in the end, death-by-ghost still seems a step up from a real-life peasant existence in which children eat dirt and are occasionally stomped to death by elephants.
John Burdett practiced law for 14 years in London and Hong Kong until he was able to retire to write full time. He has lived in France, Spain, Hong Kong and the U.K. and now commutes between Bangkok and Southwest France.