Bangkok 8

[mango]

Has anyone else read the book "Bangkok 8" by John Burdett, i have just finished reading it for the second time, one of the best fictional books based in LOS i have ever read.

I have read Collin piprell's stuff and that was very good and extremely funny at times, Jake needham ok, but this book by Burdett is in a class of its own.

[bina]

read it as parents sent it to me in israel; its now making the rounds of the anglos here on the kibbutz....terrific, does he have more of the same genre?

[Storekeeper]

Read it last year...personally prefer Needham's style. He seems to be more consistent with follow up books as well. And he has a website for updates as well.

[tuky]

Have read it a couple of times too!

Great book, however one point detracted from the book. Did you pick it up too? where the cops had that young farang guy in the station with a bag of dope? The policeman set fire to the 5k baht the young had as a bribe?

Have read Jason Schoonover's two books also, the second was better than the first. "Opium Dream" I think it was called, and the first one was called "Thai Gold".

Haven't read Needham yet though.

[mango]

Yeh i agree the part about the young farang kid with the weed "getting caught on purpose" was a bit poor, i will have a look for Jason Schoonover's books this weekend. cheers. have you read collin pipprells books? kicking dogs, bangkok knights and yawn a thriller?

[shopgurl]

John Burdett wrote two previous books in the late nineties:

1) The Last Six Million

2) A Personal History of Thirst

[mango]

Hi there shopgurl, have you read these books? if so what are they like?

i will have a look on the net for some reviews.

cheers Mango

[OldAsiaHand]

I seem to recall that Burdett's previous book was actually called 'The Last Six Million Seconds.' It was supposed to have been a story of Hong Kong just before the handover, in 1997, which I suppose is the reason for the rediculously clunky title.

Frankly, I thought it was both a dull and irritatingly earnest book. To tell the truth, however, that's also what I thought about 'Bangkok 8,' too.

Both books took terrific settings with lots of sex appeal and, for my money, did almost nothing with them. I was flabbergasted that Burdett could manage to render both Bangkok and Hong Kong without leaving any real flavor of either place with his readers.

Give me Jake Needham's stuff any day. Both KILLING PLATO and LAUNDRY MAN offer a far better flavor of contemporary expat life in Thailand (and even Hong Kong) than do either of Burdett's books. If you spend much time here, you very probably would smile and nod knowingly as you read them.

For example, check out one of the online reviews of LAUNDRY MAN by a local old hand at Mangosauce.com or maybe even take a look at the official Jake Needham web site

[tuky]

Yeh i agree the part about the young farang kid with the weed "getting caught on purpose" was a bit poor, i will have a look for Jason Schoonover's books this weekend. cheers. have you read collin pipprells books? kicking dogs, bangkok knights and yawn a thriller?

The policeman set fire to the 5k baht the young had as a bribe?

I thought this was illegal and very unlikely that a Thai would do this to a bank note considering the face that adorns the note!!!

Thats what let it down for me.

I will have a look for pipprells book and see what they are like.

[NedKelly]

I'm reading a book called 'Bangkok' by John Burdett at present. Not sure if it the same one mentioned above as Bnagkok 8........anyway it is annoying as he keeps referring to Khao Shan road.......not Khao San Rd.........and there are quite a few other things I have noticed which show that this person has not been in Thailand for long if ever.............and I am only about 1/8th the way through it so far. Otherwise its ok but does not keep me glued to it like a really good book would.

[mango]

Give me Jake Needham's stuff any day. Both KILLING PLATO and LAUNDRY MAN offer a far better flavor of contemporary expat life in Thailand (and even Hong Kong) than do either of Burdett's books. If you spend much time here, you very probably would smile and nod knowingly as you read them.

I have The Big Mango and also Tea Money by Jake Needham, i never read Laundry Man as i was always under the inpresion that this was more or less the same as Tea Money. As for The Big Mango i know that Jake was trying to get this made in to a movie and the rights for this had already been sold to a production company, do you think that it would make a good movie or do you think that this storie would be better off left as a read only? Als i will check out Killing Plato as i have never read this one.

Cheers Mango.

[tuky]

I'm reading a book called 'Bangkok' by John Burdett at present. Not sure if it the same one mentioned above as Bnagkok 8........anyway it is annoying as he keeps referring to Khao Shan road.......not Khao San Rd.........and there are quite a few other things I have noticed which show that this person has not been in Thailand for long if ever.............and I am only about 1/8th the way through it so far. Otherwise its ok but does not keep me glued to it like a really good book would.

Sounds like the same book Ned, that book refers to Kao Shan road too. The book is featuring a Luk Krung Detective named Jittlecheep and a big African American marine dying a death of snake bite?

[OldAsiaHand]

I have The Big Mango and also Tea Money by Jake Needham, i never read Laundry Man as i was always under the inpresion that this was more or less the same as Tea Money. As for The Big Mango i know that Jake was trying to get this made in to a movie and the rights for this had already been sold to a production company, do you think that it would make a good movie or do you think that this storie would be better off left as a read only? Als i will check out Killing Plato as i have never read this one.

I read in a magazine interview with Needham somewhere that TEA MONEY was published only in Thailand to benefit a local orphanage and that the finished book published internationally as LAUNDRY MAN was actually at least somewhat different and came out a year or two later. I'm not sure myself since I read only LAUNDRY MAN, but I certainly did enjoy its portraits of Bangkok and Phuket.

As for THE BIG MANGO, that's a good question. It is a little hard to see it as a movie, isn't it? What I liked about the book was its sense of humor, which came in part from a little exaggerating of some of Thailand's characteristics with a kind of a nudge and a wink to the knowing. It was a lot like reading Elmore Leonard. What made it fun was the language and the flavor of the place where it was set. A movie would almost certainly trash both of those things that Needham does so well just as the movies made from Elmore Leonard's books usually turn out to be far less fun than the books they were based on.

[merlin1]

I'm reading a book called 'Bangkok' by John Burdett at present. Not sure if it the same one mentioned above as Bnagkok 8........anyway it is annoying as he keeps referring to Khao Shan road.......not Khao San Rd.........and there are quite a few other things I have noticed which show that this person has not been in Thailand for long if ever.............and I am only about 1/8th the way through it so far. Otherwise its ok but does not keep me glued to it like a really good book would.

Bang on Ned -- many surprising factual errors that anybody living in BKK would notice.

I couldn't finish the thing because it was so formulaic. I like books to be more than just travelogues. Most of these set-in-Thailand novels don't cut the mustard but I'm first to admit I'm a snob. Graham Greene set the standard for expat fiction (if there is such a genre) and nobody has managed it since.

[Totster]

I read a book by Paul Adirex called "Mekong".... pretty interesting book set on the Thai/Laos border.. it's all about some of the myths in the region and includes some people being stuck in a secret/lost village where they have to "repay" their karma before they can leave... it's a good read.

totster

[Storekeeper]

Jake Needham is good people...corresponded with him last year and he was nice enough to send me an autographed copy of the Big Mango. Since I didn't ask I though it was a pretty good hearted gesture.