The Godfather of Kathmandu by John Burdett

Published : March 08, 2010 :: 16:03:10 [ 1,435 views ]

The Thai detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep returns. He is a devout Buddhist who has found his guru, a Lama living in Kathmandu. Sonchai, struggling with a personal tragedy is investigating the murder of a Hollywood filmmaker when his boss Colonel Vikorn orders him to arrange a heroin deal that would cement Vikorm’s control of the illegal trading in Bangkok.

Vikorm’s rival is none other than General Zinna who will do anything to stop him and Sonchai discovers that the mastermind behind the heroin trade is his guru Tietsin. Sonchai has again been thrown into the dangerous politics of his city and must find a way to stay true to his Buddhism, solving the crime and keeping his bosses happy. Fortunately for him, he can still rely on Kimberley Jones, of the FBI and his gender challenged partner Lek,

Readers of John Burdett’s books know that he adept at getting under the skin of the Thai capital where he makes his home. Some of the scenes take place in the Himalayan haunts of the Nepalese capital, but for those who hunger for the sounds, taste and smells of Bangkok, need have no fear as the city once again is the front and center in this Thai corruption, mayhem and intrigue. His Buddhist faith enables him to take a long view of drug trafficking.

This novel holds a lot about Buddhism and as with the other subjects Burdett explores, you get a feeling that he has a deep understanding of it. Whether this is true or not, the important thing is, he makes you believe in his authority when he asserts it.

There is a lot about Buddhism in this novel and, as with the other subjects Burdett explores in its pages, you feel that he has a deep understanding of its tenets. This may or may not be true, but the important thing about him as a writer is that he makes you believe in his authority when he asserts it. He is a writer skilled at putting across his story, unfolding it deliberately and pacing it slowly as he defers revelation. He may overdo this a bit at times – the book could have been shorter and more tightly woven without giving up its power – but on the whole you sense that he is always in control of his narrative.

The novel is considerably enhanced by the author’s device of telling it in the second person. Having the tale told directly to the reader is very effective here, particularly because it is made clear that it is being told to a foreigner. This enables Burdett to explain cultural oddities and customs in a natural manner, never seeming didactic. Thus the narrative itself flows smoothly, never seeming forced or crude. And it must be admitted that when the twin mysteries – a murder and a complicated and fraught commercial transaction – are solved, they are done so in a satisfying way well worth the elaborate windup and consequent wait.

Inevitably, there is a lot about drugs in all their aspects in “The Godfather of Kathmandu.” They are central to so much that goes on in its pages. The protagonist narrator, a police officer with a Western father and a Thai mother, straddles many worlds in the balancing act that is his life. And he is keenly aware of this:

“I was sitting at my desk feeling guilty that I was so much richer, all of a sudden, than all the other straight cops; except there weren’t so many of them, so there was no real justification for the guilt, and I was simultaneously wondering if I’d inherited the farang [foreign] disease of self-recrimination from my long-lost GI dad. But I realized I had to do something to earn my dough, even if it was illegal and bad and likely to land me in the drug traffickers’ hell for a couple hundred years. (A Sisyphic adaptation: you are forever pushing your rock up a hill toward the gigantic syringe at the top; just as you are about to grab the smack, your strength gives out and you and the rock are at the bottom of the hill again; and that’s only for small-time dealers – I didn’t dare think what happened to heavy traffickers.)”

Despite his all-Thai name, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, detective in Royal Thai Police, District 8, deals in diverse cultures, religions and mythic constructs. His mother was a sometime prostitute turned courtesan, then madam, and she provided him with a richly varied education in life. This did not include only the expected, but also a stint in such Parisian haunts as Maxim’s when she was taken there in style as the mistress of a Frenchman.

It is precisely Jitpleecheep’s unique ability to be both consummate insider and curious outsiders that makes him the ideal cicerone to the high life and low life of Bangkok. Whether it is an upscale shopping mall, a luxurious riverside mansion or the colonial grandeur of the famed Oriental Hotel with its Somerset Maugham suite, the demotic street market with its varied food stalls or the red-light district, he is knowing and yet still amazed. And in the end, it is this liminal quality of the protagonist, more than Burdett’s undoubted skills as a mystery writer, that the reader will carry away from his latest creation.

Patty Brown

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