"One of the most startling and provocative mysteries I've read in years." – Carl Hiaasen"Read this book, savor the language – it's the last and the most compelling word in thrillers." – James EllroySurreal Bangkok, city of temples and brothels, where Buddhist monks in saffron robes walk the same streets as world-class gangsters, where bodies and souls are for sale or rent, and where the way you die may be more important than the way you live.Inside a locked Mercedes an African-American Marine sergeant is killed by a maddened python and a swarm of cobras. Two cops – the only two in the city not on the take – arrive too late. Minutes later, only one is alive.Sworn to avenge the death of his partner and soul brother, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a fair-skinned Thai and a devout Buddhist who commutes daily between the sacred precepts of his religion and the profane delights the city has to offer, works his way through District 8. His tools are the forensic techniques of the modern police department; no less vital is his profound understanding of the mystical workings of the spirit world.Soon he is in a realm he has never before encountered: the moneyed underbelly of Bangkok, where desire rules and the human body is as custom-designable as a raw hunk of jade – and where Sonchai eventually tracks the killer, a predator of an even more sinister variety.A highly original story of gripping pace and reality, Bangkok 8 is a rare thing: a darkly atmospheric novel redolent with the authentic, hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok. You've never read a thriller quite like this.

At the start of Burdett's superb third mystery-thriller to feature Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep (after Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo), Jitpleecheep shows old friend Kimberley Jones, an American FBI agent, a vicious snuff film he's received depicting the murder of an ex-lover of his named Damrong. Jitpleecheep and Jones maintain their complex platonic relationship as, helped by Jitpleecheep's assistant Lek, they pursue Damrong's killers. The trail leads them to an important banker, an American teacher, a Buddhist and an exclusive men's club called the Parthenon. Jitpleecheep, who now lives with Chanya, a former prostitute pregnant with his child, is visited in an erotic way by Damrong's ghost, while his corrupt superior, police colonel Vikorn, orders Jitpleecheep to help start a porn film business. Expertly juggling elements that in lesser hands would become confused or hackneyed, Burdett has created a haunting, powerful story that transcends genre.

Killing customers just isn't good for business."My mother Nong's tone reflects the disappointment we all feel when a star employee starts to go wrong. Is there nothing to be done? Will we have to let dear Chanya go? The question can only be decided by Police Colonel Vikorn, who owns most of the shares in the Old Man's Club and who is on his way in his Bentley."No," I agree. Like my mother's, my eyes cannot stop flicking across the empty bar to the stool where Chanya's flimsy silver dress (just enough silk to cover nipples and butt) drapes and drips. Well, the dripping was slight and is more or less finished (a rusty stain on the floor turning black as it dries), but in more than a decade as a detective in the Royal Thai Police, I have never seen a garment so blood-soaked. Chanya's bra, also hideously splattered, lies halfway up the stairs, and her panties-her only other garment-lie abandoned on the floor outside the upstairs room where, eccentrically even for a Thai whore, she has taken refuge with an opium pipe."She didn't say anything at all? Like why?""No, I told you. She dashed in through the door in a bit of a state holding an opium pipe, glared at me, said, ‘I've done him in,' ripped off her dress, and disappeared upstairs. Fortunately, there were only a couple of farang in the bar at the time, and the girls were fantastic. They merely said, ‘Oh, Chanya, she goes like that sometimes,' and gently ushered them out. I had to play the whole thing down, of course, and by the time I got to her room, she was already stoned.""What did she say again?""She was tripping on the opium, totally delirious. When she started talking to the Buddha, I left to call you and the Colonel. At that stage I didn't know if she'd really done him in or was freaking out on yaa baa or something."But she'd snuffed him all right. I walked to the farang's hotel, which is just a couple of streets away from Soi Cowboy, and flashed my police ID to get the key to his room. There he was, a big muscular naked American farang in his early thirties, minus a penis and a lot of blood from a huge knife wound that began in his lower gut and finished just short of his rib cage. Chanya, a basically decent and very tidy Thai, had placed his penis on the bedside table. At the other end of the table, a single rose stood in a plastic mug of water.There was nothing for it but to secure the room for the purposes of forensic investigation, leave a hefty bribe for the hotel receptionist-who is now more or less obliged to say whatever I tell him to say (standard procedure under my Colonel Vikorn in District 8)-and await further orders. Vikorn, of course, was in one of his clubs carousing, probably surrounded by naked young women who adored him, or knew how to look as if they did, and in no mood to be dragged to the scene of a crime until I penetrated his drunken skull enough to explain that the business at hand was not an investigation per se but the infinitely more challenging forensic task so lightly spoken of as a "cover-up." Even then he showed no inclination to shift himself until he realized it was Chanya (the perp, not the victim)."Where the hell did she get the opium?" my mother wants to know. "There hasn't been opium in Krung Thep since I was a teenager."

The sixteen seductive sex stories in this steamy second volume of literary erotica from Asia are certain to entertain and arouse. Absolutely nothing is out of bounds, offering readers a glimpse into the erotic lives of Asia’s inhabitants. Well-known authors John Burdett and Dawn Farnham are joined in this collection of short stories by Miss Izzy, Lee Yew Moon and Alaric Leong from Singapore, Suzanna Kusuma from Indonesia, Amir Muhammed from Malaysia and by other erotica writers based in the exotic East. The stories in Volume 2 of “Best of Asian Erotica” explore erotica from a variety of angles, but they all celebrate the sensual in the sure voice of first-rate writing. “Best of Asian Erotica” is Asia’s sexiest short-story series and is a welcome and rich addition to the growing list of erotic literature in this most erotic corner of the world.

Sonchai Jitpleecheep – John Burdett's inimitable Thai police detective – is summoned to the most shocking and intriguing crime scene of his career. Solving the murder could mean a promotion, but Sonchai, reeling from a personal tragedy, is more interested in Tietsin, an exiled Tibetan lama based in Kathmandu who has become his guru.There are, however, obstacles in Sonchai's path to nirvana. Police Colonel Vikorn has just named Sonchai his consigliere (he's been studying The Godfather on DVD) in his ongoing battle with Army General Zinna for control of Bangkok 's network of illegal enterprises. And though Tietsin is enlightened and (eerily) charismatic, he also has forty million dollars of heroin for sale. If Sonchai truly wants to be an initiate into Tietsin's 'apocalyptic Buddhism,' he has to pull off a deal that will bring Vikorn and Zinna to the same side of the table. The challenge is further complicated when he meets Tara, a Tantric practitioner who captivates him with her otherworldly techniques.Here is Sonchai put to the extreme test – as a cop, as a Buddhist, as an impossibly earthbound man – in John Burdett's most wildly inventive, darkly comic, and wickedly entertaining novel yet.

A plastic bag containing three rotting heads is discovered near the Chinese mainland. The British seem to be keen for the investigation to drag on until after June 1997, the powerful Mr Xian wants a swift conclusion to the case, and the NYPD are taking a curious interest in events.

Brand-new stories by: John Burdett, Henry Blodget, Peter Blauner, Jason Starr, Megan Abbott, Reed Farrel Coleman, Stephen Rhodes, Twist Phelan, Tim Broderick, Jim Fusilli, David Noonan, Richard Aleas, Lawrence Light, James Hime, Mark Haskell Smith, Peter Spiegelman, and Lauren Sanders.From a distance — on television, say, or in the pages of the business section — it looks like such a clean, well-lighted place, a place where decisions to buy or sell are guided by formulas and subtle strategy, and thorough, dispassionate consideration of all available facts. A place where cool reason prevails. And sure, that’s one version of Wall Street — call it the CNBC edition. But this book is about another place, just beneath that shiny surface — a place where fear and greed have always held sway. Think WorldCom or Tyco; think Enron. Think Gordon Gekko.Wall Street Noir illuminates a place whose boundaries have spread well beyond Trinity Church and the East River. In today’s relentlessly global economy, Wall Street is everywhere: a borderless, virtual city encompassing Midtown Manhattan, Main Street, U.S.A., the maquilas of Honduras, the office towers of Shanghai, and the brothels of Bangkok. It’s a shadowy metropolis, as the stories in this exciting collection reveal, and one that’s far more Jim Thompson than Warren Buffet.