"One of the most startling and provocative mysteries I've read in years." – Carl Hiaasen "Read this book, savor the language – it's the last and the most compelling word in thrillers." – James Ellroy Surreal Bangkok, city of temples and brothels, where Buddhist monks in saffron robes walk the same streets as world-class gangsters, where bodies and souls are for sale or rent, and where the way you die may be more important than the way you live. Inside a locked Mercedes an African-American Marine sergeant is killed by a maddened python and a swarm of cobras. Two cops – the only two in the city not on the take – arrive too late. Minutes later, only one is alive. Sworn to avenge the death of his partner and soul brother, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a fair-skinned Thai and a devout Buddhist who commutes daily between the sacred precepts of his religion and the profane delights the city has to offer, works his way through District 8. His tools are the forensic techniques of the modern police department; no less vital is his profound understanding of the mystical workings of the spirit world. Soon he is in a realm he has never before encountered: the moneyed underbelly of Bangkok, where desire rules and the human body is as custom-designable as a raw hunk of jade – and where Sonchai eventually tracks the killer, a predator of an even more sinister variety. A highly original story of gripping pace and reality, Bangkok 8 is a rare thing: a darkly atmospheric novel redolent with the authentic, hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok. You've never read a thriller quite like this

Killing customers just isn't good for business." My mother Nong's tone reflects the disappointment we all feel when a star employee starts to go wrong. Is there nothing to be done? Will we have to let dear Chanya go? The question can only be decided by Police Colonel Vikorn, who owns most of the shares in the Old Man's Club and who is on his way in his Bentley. "No," I agree. Like my mother's, my eyes cannot stop flicking across the empty bar to the stool where Chanya's flimsy silver dress (just enough silk to cover nipples and butt) drapes and drips. Well, the dripping was slight and is more or less finished (a rusty stain on the floor turning black as it dries), but in more than a decade as a detective in the Royal Thai Police, I have never seen a garment so blood-soaked. Chanya's bra, also hideously splattered, lies halfway up the stairs, and her panties-her only other garment-lie abandoned on the floor outside the upstairs room where, eccentrically even for a Thai whore, she has taken refuge with an opium pipe. "She didn't say anything at all? Like why?" "No, I told you. She dashed in through the door in a bit of a state holding an opium pipe, glared at me, said, ‘I've done him in,' ripped off her dress, and disappeared upstairs. Fortunately, there were only a couple of farang in the bar at the time, and the girls were fantastic. They merely said, ‘Oh, Chanya, she goes like that sometimes,' and gently ushered them out. I had to play the whole thing down, of course, and by the time I got to her room, she was already stoned." "What did she say again?" "She was tripping on the opium, totally delirious. When she started talking to the Buddha, I left to call you and the Colonel. At that stage I didn't know if she'd really done him in or was freaking out on yaa baa or something." But she'd snuffed him all right. I walked to the farang's hotel, which is just a couple of streets away from Soi Cowboy, and flashed my police ID to get the key to his room. There he was, a big muscular naked American farang in his early thirties, minus a penis and a lot of blood from a huge knife wound that began in his lower gut and finished just short of his rib cage. Chanya, a basically decent and very tidy Thai, had placed his penis on the bedside table. At the other end of the table, a single rose stood in a plastic mug of water. There was nothing for it but to secure the room for the purposes of forensic investigation, leave a hefty bribe for the hotel receptionist-who is now more or less obliged to say whatever I tell him to say (standard procedure under my Colonel Vikorn in District 8)-and await further orders. Vikorn, of course, was in one of his clubs carousing, probably surrounded by naked young women who adored him, or knew how to look as if they did, and in no mood to be dragged to the scene of a crime until I penetrated his drunken skull enough to explain that the business at hand was not an investigation per se but the infinitely more challenging forensic task so lightly spoken of as a "cover-up." Even then he showed no inclination to shift himself until he realized it was Chanya (the perp, not the victim). "Where the hell did she get the opium?" my mother wants to know. "There hasn't been opium in Krung Thep since I was a teenager."

Sonchai Jitpleecheep – John Burdett's inimitable Thai police detective – is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu who has become his guru. There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai's path to nirvana. Police Colonel Vikorn has just named Sonchai his consigliere (he's been studying The Godfather on DVD) in his ongoing battle with Army General Zinna for control of Bangkok 's network of illegal enterprises. And though Tietsin is enlightened and (eerily) charismatic, he also has forty million dollars of heroin for sale. If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin's 'apocalyptic Buddhism,' he has to pull off a deal that will bring Vikorn and Zinna to the same side of the table. The challenge is further complicated when he meets Tara, a Tantric practitioner who captivates him with her otherworldly techniques. Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test – as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man – in John Burdett's most wildly inventive, darkly comic, and wickedly entertaining novel yet