Le nouveau Burdett, maintenant que je l’ai lu, une première fois en anglais l’année dernière, une seconde fois en français – traduit par Thierry Piélat – cette semaine, une seule envie : lire le nouveau nouveau Burdett, car j’ai été encore happé par la fluidité, la profondeur, l’âpreté, la sinuosité et l’ironie extrêmes de cet auteur anglais de 60 ans installé pour moitié en Thaïlande et pour moitié en France afin de vivre plus et payer moins d’impôts. Je sais que John a terminé, entre une partie de billard sur Soi Cowboy et une bière Singha à Nana Plaza, la troisième et dernière version de son prochain thriller. Il m’en a parlé à Bangkok, dans son restaurant (ranahan) italien préféré : élégant espace blanc réfrigéré sur Sukhumvit Road, le boulevard de 200 kilomètres qui conduit à la mer (thalé). Sa méthode de travail : il écrit une première version et l’envoie à son agent qui la lui retourne avec des corrections. Burdett fait les modifications demandées et renvoie le deuxième jet de l’ouvrage à l’agent qui lui conseille de nouveaux changements. Le romancier mettra alors au point le troisième et ultime état de l’oeuvre. C’est la méthode Tolstoï-Nabokov, les deux écrivains préférés de John (avec Shakespeare) : une version après l’autre. Pour « Hadji Mourat », Tolstoï en a fait onze ou douze. Il faut donc féliciter l’agent dont j’ai oublié le nom. C’est ma règle : jamais de notes pendant un reportage. Les gens n’ont qu’à nous dire ou nous faire des choses dont on se souvienne. Il prenait des notes, le cardinal de Retz, pendant la Fronde ? Et Saint-Simon, au lever du roi ? Mais il faut surtout remercier l’auteur, ce fournisseur cool encore qu’infatigable de cette drogue inouïe, ultrarare et miraculeusement autorisée qu’est un beau roman.

Burdett à Bangkok : l’air fatigué de plaire des anciens play-boys cockneys. Michael Caine a le même dans « Un Américain bien tranquille », de Phillip Noyce (2002). La chemise bleu ciel (sifa) hors du pantalon large. La mine béate et couperosée des Européens qui n’ont pas su, pu, voulu rentrer d’Asie. Il me dira, lors de notre déjeuner italien : « Je ne croyais pas que dans la vie j’aurais autant de chance. » Fils d’une famille modeste d’intellectuels anglais qui avaient un camping-car comme Anthony Burgess et Lawrence Durrell (mais pas Graham Greene) à bord duquel le petit John a découvert l’Europe du Sud qui lui a pour toujours donné le goût du Sud, il a commencé par faire des études de droit alors qu’il avait une passion pour les lettres, mais c’est quelqu’un qui a su très tôt contrôler ses passions. Devenu avocat, il fuit l’Angleterre de Margaret Thatcher et s’installe à Hongkong, alors concession de la couronne britannique. Confronté, dans l’exercice de sa profession, aux criminels et aux policiers, il en fait la source d’inspiration de ses premiers romans. De ses derniers aussi. Je lui demande : « Pourquoi tant de polars et si peu de crimes ? – Non, Patrick : pourquoi tant de crimes et si peu de polars? » Quand nous sillonnons les mauvais quartiers de Bangkok (Krung Thep) qui sont le décor de ses romans, je vois dans son oeil qu’il cherche les vols, les trafics et les crimes que je ne subodore pas, juste happé par la beauté multicolore, supersonique et assourdissante des instants. A Hongkong, John épousera une Américaine avec qui il aura deux enfants. Qu’il ne voit plus. La conversation s’arrête. Je regarde autour de moi : il n’y a plus que nous dans le restaurant. Le nombre de restaurants, depuis mes premiers droits d’auteur, dont je serai sorti en dernier. « Evite d’épouser une Américaine, Patrick. – J’ai fait pire : épouser une Suédoise. – Tu plaisantes ? Ce sont les meilleures femmes du monde, juste après les Thaïes. –Tu as épousé une Thaïe ? –Un mariage religieux seulement. Bouddhiste. » Phoutamamaka . La Nit à qui est dédié « Le parrain de Katmandou » ? Pas posé la question.

Changer de sexe. « Le parrain de Katmandou » est le quatrième volet des aventures de Sonchaï Jitpleecheep. Sonchaï : s’intéresser. Dans « Bangkok 8 », « Bangkok Taboo » et « Bangkok Psycho », tous parus aux Presses de la Cité, on a découvert l’univers coloré, intense et brinquebalant de ce fils de pute thaïe entré dans la police royale faute de pire. Il a un génie de la déduction que ses collègues attribuent superstitieusement à sa moitié de sang américain : son père est un ancien GI qui ne l’a jamais reconnu et qu’il ne reconnaîtrait sans doute pas non plus. Sonchaï, bien qu’ayant reçu une solide formation religieuse lors d’un long séjour dans un monastère, fréquente avec assiduité les bordels, surtout celui tenu par sa mère. Il se soûle,
se drogue, couche avec des prostituées mais sa tendance la plus secrète et la plus stable va à Lek (en thaï : fer), son jeune et joli adjoint qui est en train de changer de sexe. Tous deux passent, au fil des pages, d’un crime sadique à un viol aggravé, sans oublier des braquages en forme de vivisections (« Bangkok Tatoo »).

L’action du « Parrain de Katmandou » se déroule sur deux plans : le meurtre pas piqué des vers d’un célèbre producteur américain érotomane ruiné par son quatrième divorce et un énorme deal de cocaïne entre le patron corrompu de la police thaïe, le chef corrompu de l’armée thaïe et le fameux « parrain de Katmandou » qui donne son titre à l’oeuvre, nouvelle incarnation nietzschéenne du Kurtz de Conrad et de Coppola. Deux intrigues haletantes et tordues que Burdett tricote avec un flegme britannique mêlé d’une pointe de sueur équatoriale. La seconde lui donne en outre l’opportunité de faire un portrait saisissant de la capitale du Népal, ancienne capitale hippie. Son goût, voire son obsession pour la littérature classique – l’unique auteur contemporain qu’il est capable, au restaurant, de citer, c’est Martin Cruz Smith – s’exprime dans le soin qu’il met à la création de ses personnages dickenso-byroniens : les « mules » pâles et désarmées Mary Smith et Rose MacCoy, la chimiste chinoise folle de bonne famille Moï, la Tibétaine mutilée Tara, le général gay cynique Zinna. Et ainsi de suite jusqu’à la dernière page qui arrive toujours, chez Burdett, trop tôt, comme ces invités qui se sont trompés d’heure et sonnent à notre porte alors qu’on était en train de mettre la table.

Soirée d’adieu avant mon retour à Paris qui n’est plus celui de Henry Miller. Les jours tranquilles à Clichy se sont déplacés à Bangkok. John est amoureux de sa ligne de métro aérien : elle dessert son appartement, son cercle de billard, l’hôtel Westin où il donne ses rendez-vous professionnels et Nana Plaza, théorie de bars où, une fois par semaine, l’écrivain se rince l’oeil des crimes qu’il invente en regardant des danseuses nues qui, une fois rhabillées, ont l’air de sortir du plus élégant des magasins de l’avenue Montaigne. La nuit vibre comme un moteur. Tout est moite et frais. John m’entraîne dans un établissement désert : « Avant, ici, il y avait les plus belles filles de Thaïlande. » C’est un amoureux proustien des ombres qui écrit aussi bien que le diable.

Critical Mick: Let’s start by getting the banana thing out of the way: in Thailand, is it normal to peel bananas from the bottom? Or was my uncle having me on?

John Burdett: Was your Uncle the same Uncle Oswald of Roald Dahl fame? A fabulous yarner, but not a reliable witness.

CM: Fried scorpions-? Crickets-?

JB: These are on sale on the street every day in Bangkok. Crickets fried in garlic and butter are a common delicacy. Scorpions and similar insects, especially tiny mountains of cooked ants, are also available, but the local preference is for crickets. I am told all such insects are an excellent source of protein ? as ["Born Survivor"] Bear Grylls will corroborate. The Thai diet is nowhere near as exotic as the Chinese however: I’ve never heard of Thais eating dogs or monkey brains, but there is a persistent belief that a well cooked cobra will improve a man’s performance in bed, so long as the venom is first removed. We farang should not be judgmental in this respect. My grandmother ate white bread fried in lard every day: is there anything more lethal? (but she lived to the age of 88)

CM: Your Bangkok-set novels sure deliver a taste of Thailand. Not a chapter goes by, it seems, without Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep and his sidekick Lek heading out onto the food vendors along the city’s streets.

JB: I must come clean here and confess that IMHO the test of a civilisation lies in its cuisine. Thais are not very different to the French or Italians ? or Chinese ? in this respect: good food is even better than good sex: you can indulge three times a day with snacks in between without feeling exhausted or nauseous; and you don’t make anyone jealous.

CM: On the subject of unusual eating in Bangkok: the body discovered as The Godfather of Kathmandu opens has the top of the skull removed and part of his brain devoured. A Thomas Harris homage, I hope, and not a common fate for Westerners who visit Thailand-!

JB: The Harris homage is clearly made. I would like to be able to answer that such a fate is quite unheard of in Bangkok and the exclusive product of my fevered imagination. Unfortunately, the [David] Caradine case, which occurred more than a year after I had completed Godfather, has given me a reputation for clairvoyance. Nevertheless, I would say the girls in the bars have more to fear from farang than the other way around.

CM: Let’s talk cops. Is it true that in Bangkok, a punishment for bad police is being forced to wear a Hello Kitty armband?

JB: The government has tried everything, including the Hello Kitty armband, designed to shame an errant cop by demeaning his manhood. But you cannot fight poverty with schoolyard psychology. The police are simply not paid enough to keep them honest. I believe economists will tell us that it’s all to do with the tax base. I guess one answer would be to legalise prostitution: as by far the biggest industry and the largest employer: the tax revenue might be sufficient to provide the police with a living wage (this option was considered and even planned by Prime Minister Taksin, before a coup d’etat sent him into exile). If they also legalised marijuana and imposed a hefty duty, as we do with the lethal drugs nicotine and alcohol, they might end up with the most honest police force in Southeast Asia ? and a lot of very happy tourists.

CM: In Sonchai’s department, only Detective Sukum Montri (who’s a bit of a joke) is a straight arrow. Top cop Colonel Vikorn keeps a poster against police corruption on his wall as a reminder of where his multi-millions have come from.

JB: Before we get judgmental we must look to historical precedent. The British Empire was financed by opium and slavery. Even after we abolished slavery in the U.K., we continued to buy cotton from Virginia at slave-cheap prices, which is how we got wealthy enough to afford our superiority complex. Vikorn is simply following market forces just like Palmerston & Disraeli, Friedman & Thatcher.

CM: Sonchai Jitpleecheep was once billed as the only honest cop in Bangkok. In this fourth novel in the series, he seems to have slipped. He’s in a position where he’s being asked to broker a huge drugs shipment. On a more personal level (the smoking of an odd joint in the toilets) he posits: sometimes the law is just wrong.

JB: Trust me, I practiced law for 15 years: sometimes it is just plain wrong.
There are persistent rumours that a significant proportion of the funds invested in large real estate projects in Bangkok, often through Wall Street, is the product of Western money laundering.

CM: Have you been given any trouble by police, army, HiSo types, and others that are portrayed unflatteringly in your novels?

JB: I have taken the precaution of not having any of the books translated into Thai. Furthermore, police corruption is a constant topic and hardly a day goes by without reports of police and institutional misbehaviour flooding the media. If anything the Thai media pursues the endemic corruption theme with even greater enthusiasm than the English language press, and it is impressed upon us every year just how poorly Thailand scores in the regional corruption statistics. My favourite is the story of two young male cops who proved that two attractive young women were prostitutes by having sex with them for money. Sometimes fiction cannot compete with reality.

CM: If some blow-in arrived here in Dublin and started criticizing the powers that be, I can see him getting a smack.

JB: Your comment on Dublin is noted. I was thinking of basing a book there, but after what you’ve said I think I’ll try Papua New Guinea.

Editor’s Note: Just because Mick receives ample smacking doesn’t mean anyone else will. It would be fascinating to read how Dublin looks to Thai eyes.

CM: The parties portrayed with the least affection in The Godfather of Kathmandu are Westerners. There’s not a one who’s given an admirable light in the present or in all of history: all are big fat johns (in the “customer of prostitutes” sense), opium dealers, double-crossing CIA agents, secret members of the underworld, conflicted lesbians or just plain brash, greedy bastards. Is that the way Thais see the outside world? Or is it just Sonchai, pissed off about his absent father and French film buff father figure?

JB: I believe it is the way Thais see Westerners; the earliest representations of farang that I’m aware of can be seen in the Grand Palace: pop-eyed aggressive giant maniacs in top hats. The Thais are not alone. The Cantonese, who were the principal victims of our world opium jamboree in the 19th Century, still refer to us as gwailos: foreign ghosts or demons. Spend an afternoon or evening in one of the down-market expat beach bars and you will see where the Thais are coming from. A large proportion of the heroin trafficking, for example, seems to be financed by Westerners. Indeed, there are persistent rumours that a significant proportion of the funds invested in large real estate projects in Bangkok, often through Wall Street, is the product of Western money laundering. I have no idea if this is true or not, but the rumour itself illustrates the underlying attitude.

CM: The setting of The Godfather of Kathmandu travels from Bangkok to Nepal to Hong Kong. You yourself are English, now resident in Thailand, with a home in France. Where are you right now? Snap a picture out the nearest window and send it along with your answers.

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JB: France. Here’s the pic. I am also sending one of my good friend who lives in Kathmandu and says Hi.

CM: Did you do any writing yet today? How much? On what?

JB: I’m spending hours on you.

Ed Note: D’Oh! Burdett fans impatient for their next fix now know who to blame. Yet again, “Mick Halpin” proves a tempting name for a minor villain….

CM: How do you do your writing? Pen and paper? Mac? Typewriter?

JB: Generic P.C.’s. The one in France was put together by a Dutchman and the one in BKK was put together by Thai teens. Neither works particularly well, but what can you do?

CM: Obsessive, ignorant punk that I am, I had to complete a lot of research while slowly reading through your novel. I downloaded a series of .mp3s of Tibetan monks chanting after your character heard the same in Nepal, for instance?.. are those tones on the stereo in the background as you are working? I’ve been working, listening to them, but it’s not grabbed me yet.

JB: With respect, as lawyers say, I find it hard to believe you read it slowly. Most reports begin something like I read it in a fever ? which is the intention.

Editor’s Note: Q. How many Mick Halpins does it take to read a book? A: Just one, but it takes him FIFTEEN MILION YEARS.

JB con’t: With regard to Buddhist chants ? which have little to do with the book although they do provide atmosphere – I think that to get the full value you need to be fluent in Tibetan and/or Pali (forgive me for assuming you are not ? Sonchai understands Pali from his year as a monk), although much can be intuited from the enthusiasm of hundreds of monks roaring out the Homage to the Buddha at five in the morning in a temple with good acoustics, incense, candles; I fear much atmosphere is lost when you listen to them on your iPod.

CM: Never mind what Colonel Vikorn thinks- what’s your opinion of Mario Puzo?

JB: One of my heroes. He violates every rule of creative writing as taught in writing workshops, especially the highly misleading Show don’t tell, to magnificent effect. He knew what most critics do not: people love a damn good yarn and go for the passion and the colour. He was a refugee from genre typing, like me.

CM: And Colin Cotterill?

JB: I must like him because I once blurbed for him.

CM: You two keep getting lumped together in conversations. Set yourself apart! What does he do that you do not? What makes Thailand worlds away from Laos?

JB: The way I write about it. There is simply no comparison. Come on, you’ve read both of us ? I can’t think of a single point of similarity. Modern critics in a hurry would confuse snake soup with porridge, and nary an apology.

CM: Let’s talk cops, part deux: you father was a London bobbie. What of him is in the detective character that you have created?

JB: Apart from some invaluable insights into procedure, especially arrest and the collection of evidence, not much. He was a very straight guy, with a very typical aversion to working in the small hours, which was called early turn. The only time he cheated was when he found a dead body at about three a.m, which lay half on his turf, half on that of another cop. He dragged it over to the other cop’s patch. He hated paperwork. I think Sonchai is probably my idea of the kind of cop I might have ended up as, had I followed in my dad’s footsteps. On the other hand, the yarns a police officer on the beat comes home with have stayed with me for life. I grew up with the unspoken knowledge that there was a whole, hidden world to which police have access. The cases my father hated the most were the floaters: dead bodies, invariably suicides, found in the big deep ponds of Hampstead Heath (known as Highgate Ponds): usually men, very often veterans of the War who could no longer live with their demons. They would become bloated after 24 hours in the water. My dad had to go out in a row boat with another cop to hook them in. He had a sensitive stomach and always threw up. There were a huge number of such suicides in the U.K. at that time (the fifties), which the authorities hushed up. I guess I realised from the start that the description of reality offered by teachers and the media was hardly better than fantasy. That’s quite a driver for a writer.

CM: Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders: “John Burdett’s Bangkok 8, on the other hand, was all local color, all weird exotica, all too much like a travelogue, albeit an especially weird one, for my tastes.”

JB: I’m afraid I do not know how to write for the genre bound. It seems to me that a certain breadth and depth is required, along with a basic generosity of spirit, in order to appreciate narratives from distant shores. It is a constant source of surprise to me that private readers from all over the world seem to get it, while a small number of self-styled critics do not. I have never promoted my books as boilerplate police procedurals, which genre, incidentally, leaves me cold.

CM: Paul Garrigan is an Irish-born ex-pat and author who’s now living in Thailand. In his memoir Last Escape: Recovering from Addiction at Wat Thamkrabok Paul (like your good self) swears by the power of meditation. Should we give him a nudge up north, introduce him to the blade wheels of Tibetan Buddhism that are so different than what’s common in Thailand? Or will the study of that branch blow his mind like it did for Sonchai?

JB: We all need to have our minds blown from time to time. In a way that is exactly what meditation is designed to do. Sure, send him up north. Actually, the result is the same in Theravada or Tibetan Buddhism, so it rather depends on the way you are wired. Being one of those who have lived in their heads all my life, I find the Tibetan path most attractive. Others find solace in ritual. I guess I would say the Tibetan path is better suited to those of us who are easily bored by repetition.

CM: What one tenet / truth of Buddhism does the world most need?

JB: All identity is illusion, so why not let go and share?

CM: What misconceptions about Thailand or Buddhism are you sick to death of correcting to interviewers who only know what they saw in Jean Claude Van Damme’s film, Kickboxer?

JB: Poverty, hardship, reverence for family and the austerity of the Buddhist path have made working class Thais tough, honest, tolerant and incredibly patient. They generally loath violence, but when pushed too far are very, very good at it and can become forgetful of their duty to be compassionate. If any of these well-known and easily demonstrated traits are evident in that film, I must have missed them.

CM aul Garrigan stated in our interview: “The most surprising thing about Thailand is that the Thais really do think differently from people in the West.” I gather from Sonchai’s outlook that this is your opinion as well. Please provide some examples for the benefit of farang dudes like me??..

JB example 1: A friend of mine bought a townhouse for his Thai wife’s family to live in. They all trooped off to temple to thank the Buddha. It was as if my friend had had nothing to do with it.

JB example 2: A well-meaning and unusually chaste Englishman asked me to accompany him to the bars one evening. He was particularly attracted to one of the girls who assumed, from his attentions, that he wanted to spend the night with her. Overwhelmed by sympathy for her lot (not to mention sublimated lust), and true to his principles, he said he would not sleep with her but would make a free gift to her of whatever fee she had hoped to receive from him. She became enraged and said in Thai: What do you think I am, a beggar?

JB example 3: I invited my Thai wife to France last year and roasted a large chicken. It was too much for the two of us, so I prepared to throw away the remains. She would not let me: This chicken died for us, we have to eat all of it.

CM: What’s next for the series? (I’ve heard you have a fifth written, but then I also heard that the third was to be your last?.)

JB: Both statements are true. I have completed a first draft of the next, working title Vulture Peak. Now I have to wait for the great wave of self-congratulation to crash on the rocky shores of editorial reality, so I can clear my head and re-write the thing from scratch. I speak from experience.

CM: What’s on your nightstand at the moment? (books, I mean, but other items if you wanna?.)

JB: Well you asked for it ? this could be the most dangerous question so far:-

Genet’s The Thief’s Journal, in both English and French
Beckett’s Premier Amour (he called it First Love in the English version)
Beckett’s The Unnameable
Descartes’ Discours de la Methode
Saint Exupery’s Vol de Nuit
Petit Larousse des Vins (the most studied)
The I Ching
Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake
Ulysses
Le Guide Gault Millau (1998)
Carlos Castenada’s The Power of Silence
Camus’ L’Etranger
John Fowles’ The Magus
Michelin’s Camping et Hotellerie de Plein Air 2009.

JB: I propose the last as the most unacceptably erudite, especially since I never go camping. I have a big nightstand.

CM: Many thanks, John!

JB: Om mani padme hum

This is the first of John Burdett’s novels I have read, and to be honest it made me wonder what the hell I’ve been doing with my life. It is electric, dazzling, sensational – the literary equivalent of mind-altering pharmaceuticals, the trade of which, incidentally, are at the heart of a bewilderingly thrilling plot.

There is so much going on in The Godfather Of Kathmandu that a simple review could not do it anything like justice, but I will have a bash at it. But in case you don’t get that far let me say this: just get a copy and read it.

The Godfather follows the journey of Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a detective in Royal Thai Police force. It is a professional journey, a spiritual journey, a criminal journey and an unbelievably enteraining journey.

Aside from his role as a detective, Sonchai is made “Consigliere” of the drug trafficking organization of his boss, Colonel Vikorn, who in turn is locked in a bitter and enduring feud with his army counterpart, General Zinna, for control of the Thai drug trade.

The crossed lines between law enforcement and criminality hands Sonchai twin tasks. First, he assists with the investigation of the violent death of a famous American film director in Bangkok’s red light district but at the same time must secure supply for Vikorn who is trying to stay ahead in the battle with Zinna.

Vikorn sends Sonchai to Nepal, where he is charged with meeting an exiled Tibetan lama, Tietsin, to work on a major heroin deal. Having just lost his son in a road traffic accident, Sonchai, a spiritual man, is an emotionally fragile state of mind, and quickly finds himself in thrall to Tietsin’s teachings. Before long the heroin deal and the murder investigation cross paths as Sonchai discovers that the dead director has also been in Nepal and possibly has had his own dealings with Tietsin. The detectives pursuit of the truth also brings him into intimate contact with a female disciple of Tietsin who further confuses his mind – as, literally, does a Thai socialite and former pharmacologist involved with the deceased who drugs Sonchai when he interviews her.

As a complex and rip-roaring plot probably suggests, Burdett is a no-holds-barred novelist. He writes explosively, like a catherine wheel firework cut loose from its mooring, firing ideas and observations in every direction, while maintaining a dangerous and astonishing momentum. Time and again as I read the book, I found myself thinking, “I should quote that piece in the review”. There is a jewel on every other page.

No single one is adequate but I settle on this vignette, narrated by Sonchai after he has organized a summit meeting between Zinna and Vikorn in which he persuades the two “old pythons” to cooperate in the spirit of the modern drugs trade, which he has previously told them follows in direct lineage from the birth of commerce as delivered by the British East India Company and Clive.

“This morning both Vikorn and Zinna e-mailed to ask me to download a portrait of Clive of India; so there he was for a moment, gracing my monitor in his powder, wig and ruff, the Shropshire lad himself, that whoring, bloody, racist, suicidal, alcoholic, upwardly-mobile, treacherous, opium-addicted narcotics trafficker who started globalism.”

The writing is as addictive as the heroin Vikorn trades. The first person narrative of Sonchai, who addresses the reader as farang (foreigner) throughout lends the whole thing a conspiratorial intimacy.

A wonderful, entertaining novel. Now for the rest of the series…

An American film producer on vacation in Thailand is found dead in a seedy hotel in Bangkok. Detectives Sukum and Sonchai Jitpleecheep, affable hero of the novel, of the Royal Thai police force are sent to investigate. From glancing around the room Sonchai is able to correctly deduce the manner in which the American was murdered. Sukum is awed by Sonji’s powers.

Beginning with Bangkok 8, The Godfather of Katmandu is the fourth in the series of novels featuring Thai detective Sonji. Narrated by Detective Sonji Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai police force, the reader is lead through the seemingly impenetrable labyrinth of Thai culture and customs. Sonji is both an insider and an outsider in Thai society. His mother (a Madame) is Thai while his father is an American GI whom he has never met. He is cosmopolitan having spent part of his childhood in Paris where he learned to appreciate the great auteurs of French cinema. Something, which will be of invaluable assistance in solving this case.

Because of his mixed blood and methods of deduction Sonji is viewed with a mixture of both respect and suspicion by his colleagues in the police force. He is usually called upon to deal with crimes involving Farang (foreigners).

Sonji will conduct us through Thai high society where we will encounter drug-addicted doctors, old ladies reminiscing for the days of the raj, and centuries old secret societies. We encounter Sonji’s boss in the police force Colonel Vikorn, the chief of Police in the Bangkok and a major drug dealer in Thailand. Sonji informs the reader of Colonel Vikorn’s rivalry with Zinna a General in the Thai army. A rivalry concerned not with national security but rather who is destined to become the country’s biggest drug lord.

The action in the narrative switches from Bangkok to Katmandu, where Sonji is dispatched by his boss to meet a seemingly drug dealing Buddhist Lama. From this point things start to go downhill for the good detective. Sonji already a practicing Buddhist comes under the spell of the Llama. He asks this Lama for mystical enlightenment and the Llama reluctantly agrees. On returning to Bangkok Sonji endures great personal tragedy resulting in his marriage coming asunder and his descent into a netherworld of mysticism and drugs.

The Godfather of Katmandu is at times humorous, at times mysterious but never ever boring. For an exotic well written thriller with an entertaining plot and characters you can’t help but empathise with you would be well advised to look no further than here.

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.

Q. The most striking aspect of this novel for me is the way you have presented Thai life as an overall picture, so that its crime, sex and drugs aspects become an accepted part of everyday life, rather than separated as part of an underworld. You live in Bangkok, so did the novels follow from your life there, or did you move there after your novels and research made it irresistible?

A. I wanted to live in Thailand from the first visit in 1986. This was purely a consequence of Thai charm, however, since I knew almost nothing about the country until I came to live here in 2001. I had not lived full-time in a developing country before. I had no idea the extent to which the economy of the poor blends with the underworld in a land without social security. Also, the importance of the black economy is much more obvious in a developing country. In fact, a huge proportion of the funds sloshing around the world derive from the illegal drug industry, but in the West this reality is hardly referred to. If estimates are correct that one third of the world?s wealth is black money, then in reality there is hardly a large building project on earth that does not make use of funds which are tainted to some extent.

Q. You?ve given Sonchai a Western absentee father, and a Thai upbringing with his prostitute mother. Over the years Sonchai has developed a Western side, both in his likes (he?s an American thriller-buff, for example) and in his career (such as his relationship with Kimberley Jones). Tietsin, his guru, is the ?Godfather? of Kathmandu. Did you plan it this way because it opened up opportunities for Sonchai to see Asian life both as an outsider and as a native, or because it enabled Sonchai to bridge the divide between West and East for your readers?

A. From the start Sonchai has been sincere and even zealous about his Buddhism. Although he looks to the West for cultural entertainment, he always looks East when it comes to matters of the sprit. However, as a bilingual Eurasian who surfs the Net, he cannot help noticing that there is an alternative form of Buddhism out there. He was brought up in the Theravada tradition, which is roughly the equivalent to the orthodox Christian church in that it claims to be the ?original? teaching. Tibetan Buddhism, on the other hand, derives from the highly developed form of Buddhism called Mahayana which fled India during the Mogul invasion and continued its development in the monasteries of Tibet. Sonchai, a natural intellectual, is intrigued and seduced. All of a sudden he is the ignorant Westerner asking naive questions about Buddhism.

Q. Is there a sharp divide between the ex-pat and the Thai ways of living in Bangkok? If so, do you feel rather like Sonchai yourself?

A. There are huge cultural divides. Most Southeast Asians in my experience are secure in their very long traditions and although they may develop Western tastes, these tend to be superficial. The underprivileged, in particular, tend to be immigrants from the Northeast with their own culture, which differs from standard Thai in both language and tradition, so in reality Bangkok is largely a city of immigrants. If you add in the Moslems, the Sikhs, the Hindus and the Chinese, almost everyone is a kind of ex-pat. For example, I have never found a taxi driver who was brought up in Bangkok.

Q. The central murder-victim, the American, dies horrifically in this novel by a means that springs from the storyline. Your novels all seem to have a spectacular means of death. Is this an aspect that intrigues you? It certainly does the reader.

A. I think a thriller writer comes to view his corpses in a similar way to a forensic scientist. While a lay person may be horrified by the crime, your author is professionally intrigued and wants to know how the heck he can get out of the trap he has set for himself: I never plan my books.

Q. ?If I know I?m crazy, does that mean I?m not?? Sonchai sets himself some glorious philosophical conundrums, and his overall way of meditation keeps your text alive and bubbling. Your first novel was introduced by one reviewer as by ?a wonderful writer?. Having read even the first page of The Godfather of Kathmandu no one could doubt that. Have you always wanted to write, or was it your law career that sparked off a wish to write crime fiction. And why crime fiction in particular?

A. I always wanted to write. My first writing assignment at school took place when I was six years old. Everyone else in the class wrote about two sentences. I went on and on and had to be stopped by the teacher. When I graduated with a degree in English and American literature, however, I found there was no work. The problem of providing for myself took precedence over trying to write, so I read law. When I finally had sufficient dough to quit law, I had developed enough commercial nous to think about my target audience: who buys what kind of books? I remembered that as a stressed-out lawyer the only novels my overworked attention span could tolerate were thrillers. I figured that was probably true of a lot of people in the 1990s, so I settled on that form. I had acquired quite a good grasp of the police practice by then, even though I only had a few criminal cases in my career.

Q. You have created some splendid characters in this novel on both sides of the line between law and crime. Did they all develop from your imagination after your research of the Thai scene, particularly the crime and sex worlds, or from people you met, or are they entirely figments of your imagination?

A. The characters themselves tend to use real people as starting points, which are by no means exclusively Thai. The Thai-Chinese pharmacist, for example, was inspired by a Hong Kong Chinese woman I once worked with as a lawyer in Hong Kong long before I came to live in Thailand.

Q. I have read that you worked in Hong Kong in the legal profession for some years, and Hong Kong immediately summons up a stereotype picture of ?business, business, business?. Does Hong Kong life also have a deeper dimension quite apart from the ?business? element, or were you attracted to write about Thailand, not Hong Kong, because it is so different?

A. Hong Kong differs from Thailand both in reality and in the popular imagination because Hong Kong has such a strong ?British? side to it, even today. Thailand has never been colonised and has held onto its very strong, centralised culture through both British and Japanese colonisation of the surrounding countries. Therefore the image of the ?exotic East? is much more clearly defined when one writes about Bangkok as compared with Hong Kong. On the other hand, Hong Kong does have a deeper, and less penetrable, aspect. Hong Kong Chinese tend to have kept their Confucian traditions and I have called on these somewhat in building the Chinese characters in Godfather.

Q. According to Wikipedia, you would like to move beyond the crime field once the Bangkok series is completed. Is this so, or have you not yet decided where the writing path will lead you? It seems to me that in The Godfather of Kathmandu you are already moving the boundaries of crime fiction determinedly outwards. I was impressed that the murder of the American was the focal point of what is a much wider canvas; it didn?t dominate the novel to the extent that its whys and wherefores outshadowed the overall Asian scene, both criminal and spiritual. Would you want to leave crime behind altogether or go further along the path you?re already treading? I realise this may be a tough question to answer, however, when you?re not yet finished with Sonchai and Bangkok ? at least I hope you?re not.

A. I am not sure. In the past two books I have realised how flexible and open-ended the crime thriller form can be. I shall probably continue to experiment and to stretch the form as far as it will go. Who knows, it might develop into a genre of its own: the mystic thriller?

Q. Rebirth is a recurring thread through your novel ? naturally since Buddhism plays such a large part in the novel and in Sonchai?s personal life, and colours his attitude to what is happening. It never feels ?dragged in? as a theme, however. Is this because, as you live in Bangkok, it becomes part of everyday life for you?

A. I think the idea of rebirth or reincarnation is such a powerful one for all of us, that to live for even a short time in a culture where such a possibility is part of the fabric is to risk having your outlook subverted. I have no memory whatsoever of a previous existence, but I cannot help thinking about what it might have been like, or how the next one might turn out. Even though I?ve never admitted that I believe in it, not even to myself.

Q.Does Kathandu play such a distinct role in your mind as Thailand while you?re writing, or do all the Asian countries intrigue you to the same extent?

A. All of Asia is endlessly fascinating for its variety, history and geography. Since we in the West generally know almost nothing of this history, living here can be like a continuous Discovery programme. Nepal, though, occupies a very special place in my heart. I visited Kathmandu even before I visited Thailand and have returned two or three times a year ever since. The tiny mountain state with its holy men, its mountains, its Hindu rituals, its Buddhist refugees from Tibet, its high-achieving Western mountaineers, its echoes of an intensely romantic chivalric past, similar to that of Rajasthan: how could I resist?

Q. It?s been a great pleasure both to read The Godfather of Kathmandu and to have the opportunity to throw questions at you, and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. My last all-important question is: when does The Godfather?s successor appear?

A. The successor is written and with my agent. I cannot say more than that, except that it does star Sonchai as usual.

A SHOTS EZINE INTERVIEW

Looked at in this way, the modern thriller, whether in novel or movie form, looks like a trivialisation of the archetype, with its monotonous orgy of blood, rage and gore underpinned by nothing beyond the commercial need to extract one more cheap thrill from a tired genre. But need it be so? After all, has there ever been a more fragmented age than ours, or one where conventional morality has so broken down that no one is quite sure of what it consists, or if it exists at all outside of family entertainment? Raskolnikov would have understood perfectly the psychology of a suicide bomber. Macbeth’s ambition hardly differs in quality or type from that of Sadam Hussein or Pol Pot.

When I started to write a yarn about a Eurasian Bangkok detective I knew I had to learn something about Buddhism. Contrary to its public face, Buddhism is the most radical science of the mind. One is urged to proceed gradually, because what lies in store is an internal revolution. The world ceases to look the same: it looks realer. And a big part of that reality lies in accepting full responsibility for the consequences of one’s acts and words, not merely for this lifetime, but for hundreds to come: like it or not, we are the chaos we see when we turn on the evening news; the frontier between one’s self and the world is illusory. Sonchai does all he can to follow the Buddha’s guidance, always hoping to achieve that warm feeling we get when we think we’re doing good. Invariably his nemesis, the ultra pragmatic Colonel Vikorn, rubs his nose in the grim truth: spiritual vanity has no place in law enforcement. If you want to do good, you must also do bad, that’s the way the world has been set up, like a law of Physics. If you happen to be a monk manqui like Sonchai, you must resign yourself to the pain that goes with the privilege of partial enlightenment.

When I wrote Bangkok 8, the first in the series, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was not at all sure the form could carry this kind of metaphysical baggage, but I didn’t seem able to do anything about it. I realised the modern thriller is a kind of moral amputee, where Hannibal the Cannibal and his spin offs are allowed to turn their extreme crimes into glamour and exoticum. I wondered: have we really degenerated so far we daren’t even look at the consequences? Then I remembered Raskolnikov and Macbeth, and the agonies they went through. Of course the crime thriller is open-ended enough to carry that weight. It may be all we have with which to explore the zeitgeist.

John Burdett, Bangkok, December 2009.

John Burdett’s fourth Sonchai Jeetplecheep novel “The Godfather of Kathmandu” is published this month (Transworld, 12.99)

John Burdett is writing the most exciting set of crime novels in the world. The four books featuring Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep demonstrate the enormous elasticity of the genre and how a talented writer can use it to discourse on just about anything.

Burdett is a British lawyer who got rich working in Hong Kong and quit to write fiction. He found the right setting (Thailand), character (Jitpleecheep), and themes (the tension and hypocrisy that occurs when East meets West) to launch and sustain a series. “Bangkok 8″ (2003) opened with a bang –a man is killed by cobras in a locked car –and introduced Jitpleecheep, a practicing Buddhist who might be the only cop in the country who’s not on the take. Jitpleecheep is the son of a U.S. military man he’s never met and a Thai prostitute who lived with a series of rich men and now owns a bar/brothel in the middle of Bangkok’s massive red-light district.

Ever practical, Jitpleecheep helps his mother run the business while solving crimes for Colonel Vikorn, his ridiculously corrupt boss. Vikorn is amused and puzzled by Jitpleecheep and gives him murders involving farang (foreigners) because he thinks Jitpleecheep has special insight into them because of his background. He does, and Burdett’s masterstroke is to have Jitpleecheep narrate in second person, patiently explaining Thai society. His voice is wise, sardonic and anguished, directly addressing the reader who struggles to keep up as farang.

The next two books in the series, “Bangkok Tattoo” and “Bangkok Haunts,” refined the formula –grisly murder, philosophical dilemma for Jitpleecheep, intelligent riffs on contemporary Asia –from a street-level perspective. Thais are superstitious and pragmatic, efficient and corrupt, and they love to eat. Burdett writes about it all with relish and loves to mix zingers about the cluelessness of the West into his narrative.

“Ours is an age of enforced psychosis. I’ll forgive yours, farang, if you’ll forgive mine –but let’s talk about it later,” is how he opens his latest “The Godfather of Kathmandu.” From there, it’s off to the races. Jitpleecheep is on the back of a motorbike, zipping through Bangkok to investigate the murder of a Hollywood director whose skull was cut open and brains eaten like Ray Liotta’s at the end of “Hannibal.”

“So why doesn’t someone arrest Thomas Harris?” an uncomprehending Vikorn asks Jitpleecheep.

“He didn’t do it. He wrote the novels the crime is based on, along with Poe’s ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and maybe some other noir influences –I wouldn’t be surprised to find Baudelaire in there somewhere.”

Vikorn’s already in an odd state because he watched the complete set of “Godfather” movies. He thought “old Corleone was a total sissy for refusing to trade in smack, and Sollozzo was well within his rights to have him bumped off . . . On the other hand, he liked the ruthless way young Michael Corleone cleared out the opposition after the Don had been shot” and “loved the way they severed the head of the racehorse to intimidate Jack Waltz, but despised them for failing properly to capitalize on the wheeze: ‘They could have had the whole film industry wrapped up after that. This is the problem with farang jao paw: they’re shortsighted, triumphalistic, and they don’t have Buddhist restraint or humility –that’s why I hate dealing with them.’ ”

Vikorn has made a reluctant Jitpleecheep his consigliere (after Robert Duvall’s character in the movies) and assigned him to broker a heroin deal in Nepal that will involve a partnership with Vikorn’s bitter rival, General Zinna. Jitpleecheep, in a precarious emotional state after a personal tragedy, falls under the influence of Norbu Tietsin, who has strange spiritual powers and wants use his heroin-smuggling profits to help lead an armed insurrection that will force the Chinese out of Tibet.

Jitpleecheep’s task is to put his consigliere skills to use negotiating a heroin deal between Vikorn, Zinna and Tietsin while solving the director’s murder and staying out of the clutches of a dragon lady in Bangkok and a Tantric sex goddess in Nepal. It all connects, eventually, but readers have to be patient as the plot gets lost somewhere between Thailand, Nepal and Hong Kong and doesn’t reappear until the end.
“I need the vastness of dharma, so I’m sitting on the back of a motorbike taxi on the way to Wat Rachananda,” Jitpleecheep says in a typical juxtaposition that opens another chapter. The beauty of Burdett’s fiction is that he can have both, the dharma and the motorbike, and so can you, farang.

Jeff Baker: 503-221-8165; jbaker@news.oregonian.com www.oregonlive.com/books