Bangkok Tattoo

Bangkok, rich in history and spirituality, crowded with temples, marke ts and canals, is also a city shrouded in shadows. Polluted, corrupt, infamous as the sex capital of the world, it is a place where wealth, poverty and unimaginable evil walk hand in hand. In District 8, the un derbelly of Bangkok's crime world, a dramatically mutilated body is fo und in a hotel bedroom. It looks bad: the corpse - who's been flayed - is CIA. And it gets worse when the self-confessed murderer is the bea utiful Chanya - the best `working girl at The Old Man's Club, a brothe l owned jointly by Sonchai's mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikor n. Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involve s an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell located in a southern Thai border-town wh ere, since 9/11, the CIA has also had a covert presence. So far so goo d: but the truth will be harder to come by, and it will require Soncha i to find an ever more delicate balance between his ambition (western) and his Buddhism (eastern), while he runs the gamut of Bangkok's drug -dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, even worse military generals, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart. Crowded with astonishing character s, redolent with the authentic, hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok, with needle-sharp observations about the clash of cultures when East m eets West, this is a literary thriller like no other.