Haunted by Bangkok - intercultural thrillers

John Burdett ("a nonpracticing lawyer who worked in Hong Kong for a British firm until he found his true vocation as a writer") is the author of several thrillers set in Bangkok and featuring detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police. Sonchai is the son of a Bangkok prostitute and unknown American serviceman. In contrast to his colleagues, he is not corrupt in a country where, according to the author, corruption is the normal way of life. Sonchai's mother co-owns a girlie bar with Sonchai's boss in the police force and he has to balance his public duty with his private connections - but being Thai, he also complains about the cold, atomized West.

The Thai detective tells his story in the first person to an anonymous farang (a gaijin we would say in Japan), and therefore laces it with engaging intercultural observations. He is also a devout Buddhist with a "practically religious" world-view and the philosophical subtext is an interesting aspect of the novels. We get a most vivid, even hypnotic, picture of Bangkok's underbelly - of Patpong and its sex trade, but told in an almost nonchalant and clean way, and minus any sleaze. The women working in the bars of Soi Cowboy are the real protagonists of these novels.

Readers not familiar with Asia, Buddhism or Thailand may feel they have landed in a very alien universe, but John Burdett is a most expert guide. In fact, the strangeness is the biggest selling-point of these novels, plus the great atmosphere of Bangkok, the city that pulses through every sentence. The suspense is not only caused by the sensational plots, but also by the tension of being immersed in a radically different culture.

John Burdett's Bangkok novels are: Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo and Bangkok Haunts. Burdett is now working on a fourth novel (which he says will be the last). There are plans to film Bangkok 8, which sold 100,000 copies in the U.S.

See also this article in the International Herald Tribune. John Burdett's website has book extracts, interviews and a free short story.

Through a hole croakingly - Review of "A laughing frog"

One of the films introduced by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp in their list of 21st c. Japanese top films in Katei Gaho International, A Laughing Frog (2002; director: Hirayama Hideyuki) is a rather subdued comedy - not only because it is a bit low-key, but also because the whole film is situated in one and the same location, making it more a theater play then a film.

Kurasawa Ippei (Nagatsuka Kyozo) used to be a bank executive, but he was caught with is hand in the till. Now he is on the run. Desperately, he seeks a hideout in the summerhouse of his in-laws... where to his surprise, his wife, Ryoko (Otsuka Nene), now lives. She agrees to hide him in the closet for a week if he agrees to sign the divorce papers.

Ryoko is a characteristic Japanese young lady (ojosama, Mark Schilling calls her), immaculate, cool, and sweetly superior. She is also a winner, in contrast to husband Ippei who is the pathetic, archetypical loser.

From his hideout, Ippei observes Ryoko's new life, where there is no place for him anymore: she has a relationship with a succesfull carver of gravestones, who not only is greater in bed, but even cooks for her.

This is also where the frogs come in: croaking in the garden as if they where laughing their wits out, they join the chorus of Ryoko's orgastic moans when she is bedded by Mr Gravestone, while Ippei looks impotently on through his hole in the cupboard, peeing in a bucket because he has drunk too much beer. Did anybody say that Japan is a "male dominated society?"

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