In Burdett's brilliantly cynical mystery thriller, the follow-up to Bangkok 8 (2004), Royal Thai police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is called in by his supervisor, hard-bitten Captain Vikorn, to investigate the murder of a CIA operative, Mitch Turner, found disemboweled and mutilated. The prime suspect is a beautiful bar girl, Chanya, with whom Sonchai believes himself to be in love. When Turner's murder turns out to be far more complicated than originally thought, Sonchai must deal with his boss's rages and Chanya's gradually revealed secrets, along with CIA agents who have come to investigate the crime, a Thai army general with whom Vikorn has been feuding for years, Yakuza gangsters, Japanese tattooists, Muslim fundamentalists and more.
Excerpts:
Chanya had been watching the anguish pass and repass across his features. Now she said something that must surely have been the distillation of everything she intuited of him, of the West, of white men: "If you didn't torment yourself, there wouldn't be any difference, would there?"
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A Christian, a Muslim and Buddhist... seemed to agree on all points. Only when they turned their gaze on the outside world did their perceptions differ. One day they passed over a mountain ridge to behold a fertile and populated valley below.
"How strange" said the Christian. "In village one down there the villagers are all fast asleep, whereas in village two they are lost in a hideous orgy of sin"
"You are quite wrong" said the Muslim. "In village one everyone is in a perpetual state of ectasy, whereas in village two everyone is asleep."
"Idiots" said the Buddhist. "There is only one village and only one set of villagers. They are dreaming themselves in and out of existence."
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...it's the most literal illustration of Buddhist doctrine, which explains there is not one personality but a million modes of consciousness. Properly understood, an individual can choose any one of them at any time, although the enlightened choose none at all.
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The great weakness of the West is that it has nothing with which to inspire loyalty except wealth. But what is wealth? Another washing machine, a bigger car, a nicer house to live in? Not much to feed the spirit in all that. What is the West but a giant supermarket? And who really wants to die in a supermarket?
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...there are so many problems with Western society, but there may be one above all others that will destroy civilization. I speak of your inability to conceive that you might be wrong.
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Well, it's very simple. It is not the country's problems that overwhelm you but your egotistic belief that you can be instrumental in solving them.
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[Heroin]... It's not as addictive as TV, than which there is no greater mental pollutant. For centuries the white man was a passionate trafficker, even fighting righteous wars to uphold his sacred duty to alleviate the burden of existence for Asia's teeming billions with a drug already deemed dangerous to white men. [Ring a bell, Philip Morris?] Nowadays there's a lot more profit in prescription tranquilizers and home entertainment... think about it.
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...you are a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging, there is no center at all, everything depends on everything else, you body depends on the environment, your thoughts depend on whatever junk floats in from the media, your emotions are largely from the reptilian end of your DNA, your intellect is a chemical computer that can't add up a zillonth as fast as a pocket calculator, and even your best side is a superficial piece of social programming that will fall apart just as soon as your spouse leaves with the kids and the money in the joint account, or the economy starts to fail and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some idiot's war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this amorphous morass of self pity, vanity and despair self is not only the height of hubris, it is also proof [if any were needed] that we are above all a delusional species. [We are in a trance from birth to death.] Prick the balloon and what do you get? Emptiness. It's not only us - this radical doctrine applies to the whole of the sentient world. In a bumper sticker: The fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of the fear of letting go.
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Nirvana: We look out on the world and see only a dust laden collection of homemade symbols. Those that fit our prejudice of the moment we keep, the rest we dump. We are distracted from distraction by distraction. Nothing is happening. Nothing has happened. Nothing will happen. Emptiness is the ultimate cahllenge; identity is for suckers. Says the Buddha: All meaning is realized, the universe is nirvanic.
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