Bangkok 8
June's Tip of the Ice Pick Award goes to John Burdett for his brilliant novel
Bangkok 8 (Knopf, $24, 336 pages, ISBN 1400040442). The scene: a steamy day, a Bangkok
bridge. Homeless people mill around a shiny Mercedes hatchback, apparently abandoned. A Bangkok
cop sidles up to have a closer look; he and his partner have been tailing the Mercedes for most of the day.
What he sees shocks and sickens him: a huge python has completely engulfed the driver's head in its mouth and
is attempting to swallow him whole. The cop instinctively tears the door open, never anticipating the swarm of
angry cobras that launch themselves at him from the interior of the car. The bite of the cobra is lethal and swift;
within moments, the cop lies dead. From this point, the intensity never lets up. The book is an edge-of-the-seat,
52-chapter, e-ticket ride. For most, that would be sufficient reason to read Bangkok 8, but the gods, they say,
live in the details, and the details are what set this book apart. The protagonist, Sonchai Jitleecheep, is a study
in contradictions. The half-caste son of an unidentified Western father and a Patpong prostitute, educated in France,
Sonchai is a devout Buddhist with a taste for yaa-baa, a locally produced amphetamine. Corruption is everywhere;
everything is for sale, at a price. Burdett's command of the language is superb, and the book is intoxicating on every
level, laced with expat insights into the contradictory and surreal milieu that is Bangkok.
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Big-screen flashback
REVIEWS BY BRUCE TIERNEY
By Roger L. Simon Atria, $23 256 pages, ISBN 0743458028
Swamp scams in Florida
By Randy Wayne White Putnam, $24.95 320 pages, ISBN 0399150587
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An old favorite in the annals of detective fiction is Roger L. Simon's character, Moses Wine, currently
featured in Director's Cut. Thirty years on (the first Moses Wine novel,
The Big Fix, dates from 1973), the aging hippie detective is as strident—and as relevant—as ever.
Post-September 11, Wine's detective business has slowed to a trickle. He jumps at the opportunity for a paying gig
when a friend calls from Prague and offers him a security position on a movie set. It seems that the production has
been plagued by setbacks, apparently due to a splinter group offended by the film's subject, the Holocaust. Wine
has scarcely settled into his hotel room in Prague when he and the leading lady are kidnapped by Islamic
fundamentalists. A wild ride ensues, literally and figuratively, and our detective quickly finds himself
a human pawn, caught between the tender mercies of the Muslims and the intelligence community. Director's Cut
is a timely thriller, loaded with absorbing insider snippets about the film industry (Simon is a well-known
screenwriter), humorous jabs at governmental bureaucracy and a general disregard for icons of any sort.
If you can remember tie-dye and VW Microbuses (or, more to the point, if you wore tie-dyes and drove a
VW Microbus), this is a must-read.
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Everglades, number 10 in the Doc Ford series by Randy Wayne White, finds
the marine biologist a little the worse for wear. He has given up his daily exercise regimen in favor of beer, and he has
put on some serious poundage. A visit from an old love sets his new adventure in motion: Sally Minster arrives on Ford's
doorstep seeking his help in determining if her husband is truly dead. He was a real-estate developer with a history of
scams, and she thinks there is a good chance he didn't drown off the coast of Florida, a notion corroborated by a
photo of the man taken after he supposedly died. Reluctantly, Ford agrees to poke around into the disappearance.
His credentials for this are impeccable: although he "daylights" as a mild-mannered marine biologist, in an earlier
incarnation he was a government agent/assassin. The cast of characters in Everglades includes Ford's irrepressible
stoner sidekick, Tomlinson, and a truly inspired villain, Bhagwan Shiva (aka Jerry Singh), a shamanistic con man of
the first order. Bhagwan, if he gets his way, will cement an Everglades real estate scam the likes of which has
never been seen in Florida. Perhaps more than White's earlier works, Everglades takes on a larger-than-life aspect
reminiscent of the novels of Carl Hiaasen; this is not a bad thing, just a slightly different direction than some
of White's readers might expect. That said, there is plenty of the crisp dialog, deft plotting and easy Florida
camaraderie that characterize his earlier novels, and Everglades should provide escapist gratification for longtime
fans and newcomers alike.