August 26, 2007

Book of the Week: Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett

For those of you who like to read books that give you a vivid picture about a different culture, John Burdett’s three books about Sonjai Jitpleecheep, a Buddhist policeman in Bangkok, should be at the top of your TBR list. I just finished BANGKOK HAUNTS, the third book, and I’m really in awe of Burdett’s painstaking work in capturing a complex society that’s literally worlds different from our American scene.

Sonjai himself is a multi-layered character. Son of a prostitute, protégé of a corrupt police captain (Vikorn), and about-to-be-father, Sonjai spends much of his time trying to balance his Buddhism with his police duties, his duties in his mother’s bar (the Old Man’s Club), and the respect and love he owes Chanya, the mother of his child. In addition to these dominant characters in Sonjai’s life, his police assistant, Lek, is prepping to have surgery to become a woman.

Thai attitudes towards so many things are vastly different from our attitudes that there’s a certain shock factor in Burdett’s books. BANGKOK HAUNTS, as well as its predecessors BANGKOK 8 and BANGKOK TATTOO, doesn’t stint on the violence.

HAUNTS opens with the viewing of a snuff film. To his horror, Sonjai knows the victim, a prostitute named Damrong, with whom he had a brief affair. Sonjai feels compelled to find who actually killed her and who financed the film. Damrong is much more than a poor prostitute from a poor province, and her angry spirit begins to haunt Sonjai and the other men who had a relationship with her. Some of them are powerful men, and Vikorn puts pressure on Sonjai to abandon the investigation. Sonjai is intrigued by a monk who approaches all the men who had significant entanglements with Damrong.

Watching Sonjai try to pick an honorable path through the minefield of Thai police work can be quite horrifying, but these books are compelling and excellently written.

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I’ve had quite a few thoughts lately on how reader participation is changing the world for modern writers. Twenty years ago, writers didn’t hear from readers so much. Oh, the occasional letter, the occasional comment in a signing line . . . that was about the extent of reader/writer interaction.

Now that readers follow writers’ websites and blogs and can have some kind of interaction with lots of writers, the picture’s changing, and how to handle the new relationship is getting to be more of an issue.

I can only speak for myself and my own path, when I say that I’m going to write books the way I think they come out most truly; and by that, I mean true to the characters, to my vision of what should happen, and to the best of my skill. With respect and affection for my wonderful readers, that’s my job to do alone.

I’ve noticed lately that quite a few readers seem angry if books don’t turn out in a way that would have made them happier. That’s an attitude I find hard to understand. (Maybe it’s my age? I don’t know.) The writer is determiner of fate for his or her characters. Writing is a lone pastime, not a group endeavor. It doesn’t take a village to write a book. It takes one person, shut up in a room for hours on end.

I know that readers have every right not to be happy with the way a book ends, or with the way characters meet their fate. But to be angry with the writer? The characters belong to the writer. I know in a certain sense they belong to the reader, too; but the characters live in the writer’s mind and at her/his will.

Certainly I’m not saying that writers are above criticism; certainly I’m not saying that you should buy a book by a writer in whom you no longer have faith. I’m saying that the writer is God, as far as the characters go. The writer’s decisions are final. That’s part of the connection the writer has with her world.

I don’t often blog about the actual process of writing, because it’s so personal. The knowledge I’ve developed about my characters is one of the most wonderful things about the job I’ve got. To determine what happens to them is my responsibility, and one I don’t take lightly.

Charlaine Harris