Sonchai Jitpleecheep—the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo—returns in this blistering new novel.
Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok’s District 8, but nothing like the video he’s just been sent anonymously: “Few crimes make us fear for the evolution of our species. I am watching one right now.”
He’s watching a snuff film. And the person dying before his disbelieving eyes is Damrong—a woman he once loved obsessively and, now it becomes clear, endlessly. And there is something more: something at the end of the film that leaves Sonchai both figuratively and literally haunted.
While his investigation will lead him through the office of the ever-scheming police captain, Vikorn (“Don’t spoil a great case with too much perfectionism,” he advises Sonchai); in and out of the influence of a perhaps psychotic wandering monk; and eventually into the gilded rooms of the most exclusive men’s club in Bangkok (whose members will do anything to protect their identities, and to explore their most secret fantasies), it also leads him to his own simple bedroom where he sleeps next to his pregnant wife while his dreams deliver him up to Damrong . . .
Ferociously smart and funny, furiously fast-paced, and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts does exactly that from first page to last.
Author: John Burdett
Hardcover:
320 pages
Company: Knopf
(2007-06-05)
(2007-06-05)
ISBN: 0307263185 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $10.09 Used Price: $6.97
When a U.S. Marine is killed in Bangkok, the task of finding the murderer falls to Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, seemingly the only member of the Royal Thai Police Force whose idea of justice precludes his fellow officers' customary system of bribery. This assignment's especially important to the devout detective for during the investigation of the murder scene, the methamphetamine-stoked snakes that bit the marine also kill Sonchai's police partner, best friend, and Buddhist soul-mate Pichai. Sonchai's pursuit of revenge will team him with a sexually frustrated FBI agent and leave them at the mercy of yaa-baa-fueled motorcycle-taxi drivers as they hurtle through neon-lit Bangkok and into the labyrinthine and deadly machinations of the international jade and drug trades in search of the killer.
As Sonchai himself notes at one point, "This isn't a whodunit, is it?" And, no, it isn't, but author John Burdett (A Personal History of Thirst, The Last Six Million Seconds) infuses the plot with enough suspense, detail, and dry Asian insight to keep readers rapt as the story careens about the bars and brothels of Thailand's flesh trade, through its cut-rate plastic surgery parlors, and ends in a climax with a fittingly Buddhist twist. Bangkok 8 is highly recommended for readers in the mood for Thai. --Benjamin Reese
Author: John Burdett
Paperback:
336 pages
Company: Vintage
(2004-07-13)
(2004-07-13)
ISBN: 1400032903 List Price: $13.95 Amazon Price: $2.14 Used Price: $0.68
Bangkok--a city of heady contradictions--inspires Lara McClintoch's sense of adventure and her impressive sleuthing skills when a fellow antiques dealer disappears without a trace.
Author: Lyn Hamilton
Paperback:
288 pages
Company: Berkley
(2004-03-02)
(2004-03-02)
ISBN: 0425194876 List Price: $7.99 Amazon Price: $2.49 Used Price: $0.01
From the author of the best seller Bangkok 8, a head-spinning new novel that puts us back in the company of the inimitable Royal Thai Police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.
We return to District 8—the underbelly of Bangkok’s underworld—where a dramatically mutilated dead body is found. It’s bad: he was CIA. It gets worse: the murderer appears to be Chanya—a tough, sweet working girl who’s the highest earner at The Old Man’s Club, jointly owned by Sonchai’s mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn.
Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves Al Qaeda and Thailand’s porous southern border where, since 9/11, the CIA has been an obviously covert presence. But the truth will be harder to come by, and it will require Sonchai to find an ever-more-delicate balance between his ambition and his Buddhism, while running the gamut of Bangkok’s drug dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, worse military, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart (Chanya!)—most of which he can handle. But even Sonchai is not prepared for what he discovers at the end of his investigation.
Piercingly smart and funny, densely atmospheric, and—as we already know to expect from John Burdett—packing a surprise at every turn, Bangkok Tattoo is sensational.
Author: John Burdett
Hardcover:
320 pages
Company: Knopf
(2005-05-10)
(2005-05-10)
ISBN: 1400040450 List Price: $24.00 Amazon Price: $8.44 Used Price: $0.03
Running low on funds, ex-CIA agent Scott Sterling moves into an apartment over a Bangkok bar. He teaches scuba diving and does occasional investigative work usually involving missing bargirls or wayward spouses.
But he is soon involved in tracking a murderer through Bangkok's little known world of upper-class gentlemen's clubs, houses of domination and kinky expatriate orgies. Meanwhile, with the help of his muay-Thai trained girlfriend, he attempts to rescue a young girl from thugs in a slum. All the while knowing that his girlfriend might in fact be the murderer.
Author: Dean Barrett
Paperback:
284 pages
Company: Village East Books
(2003-10)
ISBN: 0966189965 List Price: $11.95 Amazon Price: $8.16 Used Price: $7.97
Travel writer Poke Rafferty was good at looking for trouble—so good that he made a little money writing a few offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored. But that was before Bangkok stole his heart. Now the expat American is happily playing family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and with Miaow, the wary street child he wants to adopt. Yet just when everything is beginning to work out, trouble comes looking for Poke in the guise of good intentions. First he takes in Miaow's friend, a troubled and terrifying street urchin named Superman. Then he agrees to find a distraught Aussie woman's missing uncle—and accept an old woman's generous payment to find a blackmailing theif. Soon, these three seemingly disparate events begin to overlap, pulling Poke deeper into dark, unfamiliar terrain. Gradually he realizes that he's been gliding across the surface of a culture he really doesn't understand—and that what he doesn't know is about to hurt him and everyone he loves.
Beautifully crafted, relentlessly paced, A Nail Through the Heart is an exciting and enticing read that will leave readers hungry for more from the gifted Timothy Hallinan.
Author: Timothy Hallinan
Hardcover:
336 pages
Company: William Morrow
(2007-07-01)
(2007-06-26)
ISBN: 0061255807 List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $3.95 Used Price: $1.40
Penn Gwinn and his agency partner, Jim Starret, remained in Thailand after their involvement with the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Viet Nam `non-war'. They opened a saloon for their subsistence, and expected to retire. But the warlord of the Shan State in the Golden Triangle, who is known as the Prince of Darkness, involved them in opium smuggling and in the rivalry between the D.I.A. and the C.I.A. in another of their dirty little inter-agency wars.
When the C.I.A. faces the D.I.A., only the losers win.
Author: Harold R. Miller
Paperback:
185 pages
Company: Taylor-Dth Pub
(2003-01-01)
ISBN: 0971292388 List Price: $8.95 Amazon Price: $8.95
The Adventure of a Lifetime Becomes an Unimaginable Nightmare. A thrilling new novel from the Every Man series! John Majors and three friends–Mike, Hollis, and Dave–go to Thailand for the eco-adventure of a lifetime rafting on the Pai River. But they find more than they bargained for. From the fleshpot temptations of Bangkok to the beautiful and terrifying environs of Northern Thailand’s vast wilderness areas, they find themselves tested at every turn. When separatist terrorists attempt to kidnap them in the wilderness, the four men are stranded deep in the jungle, pursued by gunmen toting AK-47s, and finally trapped in a cave with nowhere left to turn. If they hope to escape, they must face their deepest fears and put their lives–and their souls–on the line. Their struggle to survive, escape, and experience God’s grace through it all forms a thrilling tale of courage and endurance. Fred Stoeker–one of the men behind the phenomenal Every Man series–and best-selling novelist D. S. Smith join forces to bring you a compelling novel that combines the action and suspense of a thriller with real-life faith and insight for God’s men.
Author: Fred Stoeker, D.W. Smith
Paperback:
352 pages
Company: WaterBrook Press
(2006-04-18)
(2006-04-18)
ISBN: 1400070384 List Price: $13.99 Amazon Price: $0.04 Used Price: $0.01
Mathews, a former CIA agent, delivers the goods in a powerful, atmospheric thriller suggested by the colorful life and mysterious disappearance of Jim Thompson, who served as the first chief of U.S. Intelligence in Bangkok and founded the famed Thai silk company that still bears his name. In the author's telling, Thompson is Jack Broderick, whose grandson Max stakes his claim to the treasure of ancient artifacts and jewels amassed by the Silk King and appropriated by the Thai government after he vanished into the jungle at the height of the Vietnam War. When Max hires Oliver Krane's "risk management" firm to help him secure his legacy, Krane offers the brilliant and beautiful Stefani Fogg an irresistible challenge: prove Max's claim by solving the riddle of who Jack Broderick really was. Cutting back and forth between the past and present, Mathews weaves a fascinating web of intrigue and adventure that encompasses four decades of American involvement in southeast Asia as Krane leads Stefani into a shifting, shadowy world where nothing is ever as it seems, including the truth. The characters are unforgettable, the pacing is impeccable, and the narrative never loses focus despite the complicated plot in a page-turner that richly fulfills the promise of the author's first espionage novel (The Cutout). --Jane Adams
In the nerve-wracking, heart-pounding tradition of John LeCarre comes a shocking suspense novel of sexual corruption and international extortion--a tale that only an intelligence insider could tell.
A Fantasy Plan. . . For eighteen years, Peter Gaines has traveled the globe as one of the CIA's top agents. Suddenly this former golden boy is unceremoniously cut loose from the Company. But the ethically bound Peter refuses to let go. Without authorization, he returns to the site of his last assignment--a CIA-operated Thailand sex shop, the Fantasy Store.
With No Escape. In the erotically charged atmosphere of the Store, unsuspecting Japanese government officials and scientist have their wildest desires gratified, the more hedonistic the better. For all their illicit actions are captured on videotape, and used to coerce them into revealing economic and government secrets. Working in the shadows, Peter learns that the powers behind the Store cater to all of their clients' whims, no matter what the price. And to satisfy the forbidden yearnings of their cleintele, the Store is about to engage an innocent woman from Peter's past to serve as their most alluring instrument of pleasure--and their most expendable.
Author: Peter Gilboy
Hardcover:
290 pages
Company: William Morrow & Co
(1997-07)
ISBN: 0688152465 List Price: $23.00 Amazon Price: $2.19 Used Price: $0.01
Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out. Poke agrees to take in Superman, Miaow's troubled and terrifying friend from the gutter. Then he agrees to help locate a distraught Aussie woman's missing uncle and accepts a generous payment to find a blackmailing thief. No longer gliding carelessly across the surface of a culture he doesn't really understand, suddenly Poke is plodding through dark and unfamiliar terrain—and everything and everyone he loves is in terrible danger.
For Mark Rohr, a decorated Desert Storm vet, the last ten years have been filled with shady jobs like his current stint as a bouncer at a nameless whorehouse/bar in Thailand. When the beautiful and naïve Robin Antonucci arrives in Phuket City from the States and hires him to help find her missing brother Shawn, Mark sees the chance to make some easy money.
Author: Charles Benoit
Paperback:
336 pages
Large Print
Company: Poisoned Pen Press
(2007-10-15)
(2007-10-15)
ISBN: 1590584511 List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $14.97 Used Price: $14.33
Vivid, passionate, funny, deeply researched, and page-turningly plotted, this novel--set in northern Thailand--is a daring, spellbinding tale of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter named Mischa Berlinski. Unabridged. 11 CDs.
Author: Mischa Berlinski
Audio CD:
Audiobook, CD
Company: Tantor Media
(2007-02-20)
ISBN: 1400103649 List Price: $37.99 Amazon Price: $22.36 Used Price: $22.37
Oh that Charlie of mine, how I wanted her back. Dan Innes hasn't seen his daughter for two years. Now he's been delivered shattering news from the British Embassy in Bangkok: the light of his life has been arrested as a drug smuggler, languishing in wait of a probable death sentence in a hellish Chiang Mai jail. Angry and terrified, seething with guilt, reprimands, and questions, he leaves London for Thailand, prepared to fight for his estranged daughter's freedom.
But Dan's visit to the jail is inconclusive, and soon he is following the faintest of trails up in the lawless mountain region close to the border with Myanmar, where opium grows abundantly and the dangers of nature are second only to that of man. It's a place where the fearless and the foolish wander -- and disappear forever. To find Charlie, Dan must retrace her steps -- and brave the same traps that swallowed her. Here he will discover his own limits, his own temptations, as he drifts across the strange tides of an even stranger land, on a terrifying mission of self-discovery, blind faith, and salvation.
As ?uidly ecstatic as a drug, pulsating with a vivid, hothouse atmosphere, Smoking Poppy takes readers on a hallucinatory -- sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying -- journey across an enthralling, suspense-charged landscape. Graham Joyce, who brilliantly explored the far reaches of human obsession in his acclaimed thriller Indigo, goes further to prove that such obsession has no boundaries, no taboos, and -- the deeper one gets -- no exit.
Author: Graham Joyce
Hardcover:
271 pages
Company: Atria
(2002-01-01)
ISBN: 0671039393 List Price: $23.00 Amazon Price: $0.01 Used Price: $0.01
It's 1979 and Morgan O'Reilly, a dispirited CIA desk officer, is desperately trying to bury his memories. Sent to Cambodia as a Marine and then as a CIA operative during the Vietnam War, he had been given the unlikely task of pulling together a secret spy unit of orphaned street children. At the end of the war, he was only able to get one child out of the country, his surrogate son, Sophal. Years later, Sophal, now a CIA agent, disappears on a secret mission in the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand.
Tom Dillon, the dashing young superstar of the White House foreign policy staff, asks O'Reilly to find Sophal and bring him home. O'Reilly's search takes him deeper and deeper into the politics of the Thai-Cambodian border and finally into the deadly Khmer Rouge zone - a place where all foreigners are forbidden from entering and where cruelty and death are omnipresent.
Filled with the fascinating workings of the refugee camps, the life or death politics of Washington, DC, and the inner workings of the personalities that are drawn to such extreme circumstances, The Depths of the Sea is a thriller that both entertains and educates.
Author: Jamie Metzl
Hardcover:
256 pages
Company: St. Martin's Press
(2004-05-11)
ISBN: 031232202X List Price: $22.95 Amazon Price: $1.72 Used Price: $0.01
Calvino teams up with an LAPD Officer on a bodyguard assignment. Hidden forces pull them through swank shopping malls, rundown hotels, Klong Toey slum, and the bars inside the Comfort Zone as they try to keep their man and themselves alive. As the Calvino learns more about the bodies being shipped back to America, the secret of the serial killer is revealed.
Author: Christopher G. Moore
Paperback: Company: Heaven Lake Press
(2004-09)
ISBN: 9749210417 List Price: Amazon Price: Used Price: $15.00
This is a novel of international intrigue based largely in Thailand and inspired by the actual existence of a jade statue of Buddha that is venerated and carefully guarded as a national treasure. The story describes the secret theft of the statue, the replacement of the actual statue with a close reproduction of it, and the threat by a revolutionary force to reveal the secret and thus topple the government. A former U.S. Military Intelligence agent, now an Asian art dealer in Texas, takes on the duty of recovering the actual statue before the announcement of its theft and the attempted coup take place.
Author: Benjamin Izell
Hardcover:
249 pages
Company: Three Forks Pr
(2000-04-01)
ISBN: 1893451038 List Price: $23.00 Amazon Price: $23.00 Used Price: $19.00
Heaven Lake Press, Trade paperback edition (2004) ISBN:9749218612 Binding is quality trade paperback. New condition. 6" - 9 1/4" tall. Publisher's inventory.
Author: Christopher G. Moore
Paperback: Company: Heaven Lake Press
(2005-01-12)
(2004-12-09)
ISBN: 9749218612 List Price: Amazon Price: Used Price: $33.79
Inside a secluded, lush estate located on the edge of Pattaya, an eccentric Englishman's gardener is found hanged. Calvino has been hired to investigate. Calvino finds himself pulled deep in the shadows of the war against drugs, into an empire of a local warlord with the trail leading to a terrorist who has caused Code Orange alerts to flash across the screen of American intelligence. In a story packed with twists and turns, Calvino traces the links from the gardener's past to the door of men with power and influence who have everything to lose if the mystery of the gardener's death is solved.
Author: Christopher G. Moore
Paperback: Company: Heaven Lake Press
(2004-05)
ISBN: 9749206665 List Price: Amazon Price: Used Price: $125.00
First novel in the celebrated Vincent Calvino Series with a new introduction by Christopher G. Moore. Calvino's investigation into Hoadly's death takes him from the red-light district of Patpong to the slums of Klong Toey. He works himself through the power structure of gangsters, godfathers and crooked police officials. The search for Ben Hoadly's murderer plunges Calvino into the dark side of the City of Angels, where professional hitmen have orders to stop him. From the world of thinner addicts, dope dealers, fortune tellers, and high-class call girls, Calvino peels away the mystery surrounding Hoadly's death. In the end, the motive is greed for a woman, for power, and money.
Author: Christopher G. Moore
Paperback:
299 pages
Company: Heaven Lake Press
(2004-09)
ISBN: 9749238931 List Price: Amazon Price: Used Price: $39.00
Shopping Guide 
When a U.S. Marine is killed in Bangkok, the task of finding the murderer falls to Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, seemingly the only member of the Royal Thai Police Force whose idea of justice precludes his fellow officers' customary system of bribery. This assignment's especially important to the devout detective for during the investigation of the murder scene, the methamphetamine-stoked snakes that bit the marine also kill Sonchai's police partner, best friend, and Buddhist soul-mate Pichai. Sonchai's pursuit of revenge will team him with a sexually frustrated FBI agent and leave them at the mercy of yaa-baa-fueled motorcycle-taxi drivers as they hurtle through neon-lit Bangkok and into the labyrinthine and deadly machinations of the international jade and drug trades in search of the killer.
Bangkok--a city of heady contradictions--inspires Lara McClintoch's sense of adventure and her impressive sleuthing skills when a fellow antiques dealer disappears without a trace.
Running low on funds, ex-CIA agent Scott Sterling moves into an apartment over a Bangkok bar. He teaches scuba diving and does occasional investigative work usually involving missing bargirls or wayward spouses. 
Penn Gwinn and his agency partner, Jim Starret, remained in Thailand after their involvement with the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Viet Nam `non-war'. They opened a saloon for their subsistence, and expected to retire. But the warlord of the Shan State in the Golden Triangle, who is known as the Prince of Darkness, involved them in opium smuggling and in the rivalry between the D.I.A. and the C.I.A. in another of their dirty little inter-agency wars. 
The Adventure of a Lifetime
Heaven Lake Press, Trade paperback edition (2004) ISBN:9749212657 Binding is quality trade paperback. New condition. 6" - 9 1/4" tall. Publisher's inventory.
Mathews, a former CIA agent, delivers the goods in a powerful, atmospheric thriller suggested by the colorful life and mysterious disappearance of Jim Thompson, who served as the first chief of U.S. Intelligence in Bangkok and founded the famed Thai silk company that still bears his name. In the author's telling, Thompson is Jack Broderick, whose grandson Max stakes his claim to the treasure of ancient artifacts and jewels amassed by the Silk King and appropriated by the Thai government after he vanished into the jungle at the height of the Vietnam War. When Max hires Oliver Krane's "risk management" firm to help him secure his legacy, Krane offers the brilliant and beautiful Stefani Fogg an irresistible challenge: prove Max's claim by solving the riddle of who Jack Broderick really was. Cutting back and forth between the past and present, Mathews weaves a fascinating web of intrigue and adventure that encompasses four decades of American involvement in southeast Asia as Krane leads Stefani into a shifting, shadowy world where nothing is ever as it seems, including the truth. The characters are unforgettable, the pacing is impeccable, and the narrative never loses focus despite the complicated plot in a page-turner that richly fulfills the promise of the author's first espionage novel (The Cutout). --Jane Adams
In the nerve-wracking, heart-pounding tradition of John LeCarre comes a shocking suspense novel of sexual corruption and international extortion--a tale that only an intelligence insider could tell.
For Mark Rohr, a decorated Desert Storm vet, the last ten years have been filled with shady jobs like his current stint as a bouncer at a nameless whorehouse/bar in Thailand. When the beautiful and naïve Robin Antonucci arrives in Phuket City from the States and hires him to help find her missing brother Shawn, Mark sees the chance to make some easy money.
Vivid, passionate, funny, deeply researched, and page-turningly plotted, this novel--set in northern Thailand--is a daring, spellbinding tale of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter named Mischa Berlinski. Unabridged. 11 CDs.
Heaven Lake Press, Trade paperback edition (2000) ISBN:9748717127 Binding is quality trade paperback. New condition. 5" - 7 3/4" tall. Publisher's inventory.
Calvino teams up with an LAPD Officer on a bodyguard assignment. Hidden forces pull them through swank shopping malls, rundown hotels, Klong Toey slum, and the bars inside the Comfort Zone as they try to keep their man and themselves alive. As the Calvino learns more about the bodies being shipped back to America, the secret of the serial killer is revealed.
This is a novel of international intrigue based largely in Thailand and inspired by the actual existence of a jade statue of Buddha that is venerated and carefully guarded as a national treasure. The story describes the secret theft of the statue, the replacement of the actual statue with a close reproduction of it, and the threat by a revolutionary force to reveal the secret and thus topple the government. A former U.S. Military Intelligence agent, now an Asian art dealer in Texas, takes on the duty of recovering the actual statue before the announcement of its theft and the attempted coup take place.
Heaven Lake Press, Trade paperback edition (2004) ISBN:9749218612 Binding is quality trade paperback. New condition. 6" - 9 1/4" tall. Publisher's inventory.
Inside a secluded, lush estate located on the edge of Pattaya, an eccentric Englishman's gardener is found hanged. Calvino has been hired to investigate. Calvino finds himself pulled deep in the shadows of the war against drugs, into an empire of a local warlord with the trail leading to a terrorist who has caused Code Orange alerts to flash across the screen of American intelligence. In a story packed with twists and turns, Calvino traces the links from the gardener's past to the door of men with power and influence who have everything to lose if the mystery of the gardener's death is solved.
Author: Robert D. Morrison
Heaven Lake Press, Trade paperback edition (2000) ISBN:9748717135 Binding is quality trade paperback. New condition. 5" - 7 3/4" tall. Publisher's inventory.
First novel in the celebrated Vincent Calvino Series with a new introduction by Christopher G. Moore. Calvino's investigation into Hoadly's death takes him from the red-light district of Patpong to the slums of Klong Toey. He works himself through the power structure of gangsters, godfathers and crooked police officials. The search for Ben Hoadly's murderer plunges Calvino into the dark side of the City of Angels, where professional hitmen have orders to stop him. From the world of thinner addicts, dope dealers, fortune tellers, and high-class call girls, Calvino peels away the mystery surrounding Hoadly's death. In the end, the motive is greed for a woman, for power, and money.