Reviews for Bangkok Haunts (Sonchai Jitpleecheep Series #3)

The average rating for Bangkok Haunts (Sonchai Jitpleecheep Series #3) based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-07-23 00:00:00 Chris Burrows 324 pages into this book I read this line: "Survival on earth (sic) is our true god, or we would have migrated to less challenging planets millennia ago." Actually Mr. Burdett, no. No 'we' wouldn't have. This sounds like a lofty sentiment, but really today in 2010, in 2006 or so when this book takes place or in 1000 BCE we have no choice but to stay here on this planet and go on with our lives. It's not choice, it's reality. Normally I don't give a shit when authors spout nonsensical shit. I know they do it because they think it makes their characters sound deep, but by page 324 in this book I had enough of the bullshit seeping through just about every page that is being passed off as enlightened wisdom. No, this isn't enlightened wisdom, it is bullshit. I have no basis except for the words he has chosen to put in this particular book, but I am going to take a stab in the dark and say that John Burdett is one of those assholes that thinks he is so enlightened and deep because of some Eastern Philosophy that marvels at with wide-open eyes and a clamped shut mind. In his defense for being close-minded, I'm going to swing my knife around for another hit in the dark and guess that John Burdett has done more than his fair share of drugs, you know smoked a whole lot of the wacky-tabaccy and that rather than being close-minded he's rather smoked up most of the synaptic connections that make up critical faculties. Why do I say this? Because he sounds like a whole lot of burned out dumb hippies that I've known in my life. This book is a slightly less than engaging mystery crammed full of didactic 'dialogue'. I'm being facetious, the mystery is engaging, but only for the last 70 pages or so, before that the book is just scene after scene of this detective interacting with people so that the superior enlightened philosophy and lifestyle of Thailand can be expounded to the reader. Which is all good and stuff, but first of all from the little I've read of Buddhism I think the author is at times talking out of is ass, as in the case of his description of vispassana meditation (which makes me doubt other 'facts' the author might be making that I'm ignorant about), and second of all it's really tough to describe a culture as being morally superior in just about every way to the West and then also have the barbarity that takes place in the book. Over and over again the reader is treated to diatribes against the way the West reduces people to products, but the author / narrator has very few qualms about prostitution, which one imagines from him is something poor women think is really awesome!! Prostitution doesn't seem to be an enlightened fact of life, it is a basic commodity relationship where a person is reduced to a product that is exchanged for money. It is exploitation and commodification no matter what kind of shiny happy / alternative / edgy spin you put on it. Maybe it is the lesser of evils a person can deal with in the alienation / commodification reality, but it still reduces people to things. But, that isn't the way the author see's things. He does at times have some horrific shit happen to prostitutes, but he tempers anything bad that happens by describing the system of women having to whore themselves out as being 'compassionate', well compassionate to men who might get aroused and need a quick handjob to release that arousal; something that is apparently oppressing the West; the need for sexual self-control. My own prejudices are being clear though, which is ok because I'm one of those retard Westerners who believe in Aristotelean logic, or as Burdett says over and over again, believers in X can not be Not X. Burdett hates the oppressiveness of basic logic and ridicules it quite a few times. He might ridicule basic logic, but I ridicule him about basic anatomy. Women don't have Adams Apples you fucking idiot! I know it's Thailand and there are trannies and all of that, but the two times makes this 'mistake' it's on characters who are definitely women, unless if I'm just sticking to too much of my Western Logic to think that because a person is described as a genetic woman that she must still be one a paragraph later. And trust me, Burdett would certainly point out if a character were a tranny, he loves writing about them and they help make up the local color. Speaking of color. There is a term, farang that is a xenophobic word meaning foreigner. It's kind of an insult the way it's used in this book. But sometimes it's just used as foreigner. The term is used all the time in the book, and this brings me to the last thing that I'm going to complain about. Writers who are lazy in creating their setting and make a book exotic by taking one or two foreign terms and using them all the time so that the reader is constantly reminded of where they are. Burdett uses this farang term over and over again, like three or four times a page. Couldn't he have just used foreigner? I mean, there are lots of other words all over the book that I'm sure have Thai versions of them, what makes this one term special? It's kind of like if I were writing a story that takes place in Mexico and I wanted to make sure that you didn't forget I have Mexicans talking in the story so I keep using having them say Amigo. Yes, Mexicans say amigo, but they also say every word in Spanish. It's sloppy and lazy to use this kind of crutch in your writing. I have more problems with this book. Sixty pages or so I enjoyed but the other 280 were awful. This is trash. Overwritten trash that gives the feeling of being smart because the author keeps lecturing the reader and putting too many words into sentences, like I am going here because I can fool you into thinking that putting lots of words, and some excessive and unnecessary clauses, into my writing you will be smacked around into confusion and think I am smarter than I really am, is it working? Why this is published to rave reviews I don't know. Maybe because bestselling genre fiction is so poorly written that this seems bearable? I don't know. I think the exotic local fools people into thinking the book is smarter than it really is. Or maybe because the reviewers who rave about this like that there is still a place where a man can go and exploit young women for little amounts of money.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-12-28 00:00:00 Shane King John Burdett is not a great writer to be sure... but an engaging one. You feel he's pushing you through his roller coasters instead of taking you along for the ride. The dialogue is catastrophically didactic and screams for an Editor with steel toed shit-kicker to tattoo John's arse. The damn thing is, I enjoy these reads anyway. Burdett's a strong plotter and doesn't go for the conventional neatly wrapped endings of your average thriller / mystery. His FBI character Kimberly is poorly developed and superfluous until further notice. Sanchai, our lead detective is half travel guide, half Buddhism for Dummies puppet and lovable all the same... until he's not... but for whatever reason I love him anyway. I'll be reading every book in this series despite the obvious flaws. These books are guilty over-written pleasures that make me yearn for a trip to Thailand.