A Higher Pulp

John Burdett Takes the Low Road to Enlightenment

Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species. I am watching one right now.

If that line doesn’t get your giddy-up in a go-go, you?re in the wrong place. Actually, like the fetching young victim who starts our story (more on her later), you?re in the wrong place at just the right time. It?s gonna be dark; it?s gonna be dirty; it?s gonna be downright dangerous. And, trust me, you wouldn’t want it any other way.

Not that you have a choice. This ain’t Burger King, baby, this is Bangkok, specifically Bangkok Haunts (Knopf $24.95), and here the way is paved by a pulpist named John Burdett, one of those whip-smart wiseasses who?s gonna give the crooked to you straight, whether you ordered it or not.

And give it he does, with delicious relentlessness. Sure, as crime stories go, Haunts is honed from the usual narrative suspects : a dame, a murder, a villain and a protagonist determined to avenge. Unlike most crime stories, though, this yarn is anything but prototypical, and in no respects is it more atypical than through its hero, Sonchai Jitpleecheep.

OK, so the name may not exactly roll right off the forked tongue, but that doesn’t mean the mild-mannered Clark Kent of a man isn’t worth rolling with ? not if you wanna roll right through, over and beyond every punch ever thrown in your direction.

Sonchai is leuk kreung, or half-caste ; spawn of a Bangkok whore and her long-gone G.I. lover ; which gives him an inherent duality few single minds possess. Better yet, this Royal Thai Police detective also happens to be an arhat, or “worthy one,” a bona fide Buddhist saint in this lifetime.

Unfortunately for the bad guys, arhat alternately means ?foe-destroyer,? and at that Detective Jitpleecheep is unequaled. No enemy is too formidable to vanquish, no case too convoluted to unpuzzle. The tricks of his trade ? insight (he sees things), intuition (he follows his knows) and, yes, a hard-hued soft spot for beautiful bar girls.

Damrong was just such a beauty. Like many of Bangkok?s best bawdy house workers, she came from the paddy-poor province of Isaan, where the more alluring young girls are duty-bound to hit the big city to fend for their families. A house, a well, a water buffalo, even a sibling?s continuing education ? these are some of the provisions Damrong provided.

Consequently, there?s no shame in being in The Game. This is what she did; this is how she did it. Period. And anyway, it?s only sex.

Until it isn?t. One john lead to another, the sex got heavier and kinkier, and dear Damrong got snuffed, up close and on camera. This being Bangkok, however, death was just the start of another whole new life.

Which is probably why Burdett chose to begin his book in such a murderous manner. Not only intimately attuned to Thai culture and cuisine, he?s acutely aware of Theravada Buddhist beliefs, especially vipassana, the Elders? Way of seeing things as they really are ? and can be.

In other words, Burdett gets it, and he gets it good. He got it first in Bangkok 8 with its ?indigenous ghouls,? and he got it again in Bangkok Tattoo, where skin trade took on a whole new tact. That the cat chooses to go the back alley route only makes the getting that much more profound.

In sum, Burdett parts ?a magic-ravaged land,? where hungry ghosts and past lives and amulets and offerings all come into play, and too a world where the farang (Western foreigners) are feebly ferocious; katoeys (transsexuals) are shrewd ? and marketable; and colonels come corrupt as a matter of course. We’re talkin’ ?bout the intersection of high and low, the crossroads where crime collides with enlightenment, a place dirty and dangerous and dark enough to reveal the deepest inner light.

Dig it.