Bangkok
Bob, the latest novel from Stephen Leather, is on the shelves. Leather
is a prolific writer with eight titles in his Dan Shepherd series, two in
his Jack Nightingale Supernatural series, 14 other thrillers, plus his
retelling of the episodes of Warren Olson called Confessions of a Bangkok
Private Eye and his iconic Private Dancer which I described as
being, “The best book regarding the relationships with bar girls that you
can ever read. This should be compulsory reading for all first-timers to
Thailand.”
Bangkok Bob (ISBN 978-0-9566203-0-9, Three Elephants
publishing 2011) seems to sit somewhere within the Confessions of a
Bangkok Private Eye with the plot being that of an American amateur
sleuth (Bangkok Bob), but one who can speak both Thai and Khmer fluently (as
did the Warren Olson PI in ‘Confessions’). I was left wondering at the end
as to whether the plot was something left over from ‘Confessions’ which
Leather had extended, resulting in a fairly slim volume of 245 pages.
The principal character is Bob Turtledove, who is
introduced as an antique dealer in Bangkok who has people with problems
referred to him by the American Embassy. Considering that the American
Embassy is one of the more paranoid outposts of America, the reader has to
gloss over that and accept that a Mormon couple could be referred to the
antique dealer with a good heart by their officials.
The plot unfolds as Bangkok Bob goes looking for the
Mormon couple’s son, another dutiful Mormon, who seems to have disappeared
in Bangkok’s city of 12 million souls.
Leather places the book right in the Sukhumvit area, and
Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy get their rightful mentions, as the usual ploy to
give some credibility and substance to what is, after all, a work of
fiction. The book also spends much time in a bar/restaurant called ‘Fatso’s
run by ‘Big Ron’ who sits on a large reinforced chair. This is obviously
Jools and Big Dave, and I wonder why Leather chose to be so oblique, when
the real names would have held much more weight. Another example was the
Santika nightclub fire which ends up being called the Kube.
The quest to find the young missing Mormon takes the
reader to a Russian proprietor of an English language school who it appears
is using the school as a laundry for rubles.
The reader is also taken through upper echelon police,
Hi-So and schoolgirl prostitution.
I have enjoyed Stephen Leather’s writing in the past. He
has a great eye for detail, with the first paragraph of ‘Bangkok Bob’, for
example, opening with a description of the archetypal Bangkok Hi-So lady,
complete with a Versace silk blouse, a Rolex watch (diamond studded), Gucci
sunglasses and the ubiquitous Louis Vuitton handbag.
At B. 430 on the Bookazine shelves it is an inexpensive
light read suitable as an aircraft novel. For me, this was not one of
Leather’s best, though still head and shoulders above the usual expat lives
in Bangkok books. Leather’s understanding of the Thai psyche and Thai
society is also well demonstrated in this book..
