First, I have to love any character (incorruptible Buddhist cop, or arhat, Sonchai Jitpleecheep) who mourns his partner's murder in a unique manner. Specifically, getting stoned and dancing in a Bangkok brothel where his mother Nong, a retired prostitute, once worked:
I'm pretty far gone, of course. The yaa baa [meth] has fried my brains, and on top there has been beer and ganja. The mamasan turns the music up real loud and I'm dancing a blue streak. Dancing like a tart. Dancing like Nong the goddess, Nong the whore. ...The mamasan plays Tina Turner's "The Best" on the sound system and everyone screams, "Sonchai, Sonchai, Sonchai."...Nobody remembers Bradley [the American marine and murder victim], or if they do I don't remember them remembering. I am very stoned.
Sonchai explaining the Thai police force bribery system to the female FBI agent Jones (btw, her character seems like a rare misstep in a book full of solid, memorable ones. Would an FBI agent act so slutty, needy and childish? I hope not.):
"You must understand, the Royal Thai Police Force has always been way ahead of its time. It's run like a modern industry, every cop is a profit center."
And this exchange later when Jones throws a fit over the Thai way of doing things:
"Tell me where you want me to drop you off, because what I need right now is a big fix of crass Western culture. I'm gonna go back to the Hilton, order American food to be brought to my big, bland, air-conditioned room and watch CNN until I remember who I am. This is a magic-ravaged land, you know that? Coming here has made me appreciate whoever it was invented logic, because before logic I think the whole world was like this."
"That's true," I agree. "Magic is preindustrial."
A running counterpoint is a radio show that Sonchai listens to which is a really clever, non-clunky way of cluing the listener in on the finer points of Thai psychology and thickening the atmosphere to a stew-like consistency (It's also a running joke that no matter what the topic, the host keeps returning to his favorite talking point, the growing popularity of a dangerous penis enlarging surgery among Thai men.) Here is a Buddhist monk guest commenting on Western culture:
"Actually, the West is a culture of emergency: twisters in Texas, earthquakes in California, windchill in Chicago, drought, flood, famine, epidemics, drugs, wars on everything-watch out for that meteor and how much longer does the sun really have? of course, if you didn't believe you could control everything, there wouldn't be an emergency, would there?"
(I question whether anyone is watching that much CNN in a Thai monastery but who knows. Maybe Anderson Cooper is a bodhisattva.)
And speaking of the Buddha, here is one of my favorite exchanges, between Sonchai and a young American named Ferral he has just rescued from the Hole (literally a pit outside of the station.) A little back story is needed here. The student came into the station and made a big show of dropping a small bag of marijuana at the counter. Sonchai explains to one of his counterparts the student did it so he could pay a bribe and then write about the experience on a website that specializes in stories of Americans "in peril" in the third world. This enrages his colleague who forces the student to smoke the bag of marijuana on the spot, burns the money and throws him in the hole for a few hours (which causes Sonchai to regret his honesty.) When Sonchai returns to the station, he finds the detective has left the station and the kid is still in the hole 10 hours later. Sonchai rescues him and the kid tells him he prayed to every deity he could, including Buddha who talked back (I'm sure the Up In Smoke-sized spliff had nothing to do with that):
He taps my arm. "The Buddha's great, isn't he? Terrific sense of humor. He tell you any of those jokes of his?"
"No, I don't think I've ever been quite that intimate."
Ferral shakes his head. "Cracked me up, man. Really cracked me up. Well, thanks for the experience."
...
I watch him go not without a tinge of envy. In nearly two decades of meditation the Buddha has not told me a single joke. Surely one would laugh for eternity?When Sonchai and his late partner Pichai were young, they killed a yaa baa dealer. Sonchai's mother sent them to stay at a Buddhist monastery. The head monk was Sonchai's boss, Colonel Vikorn. Here he explains to another police colonel why Sonchai is such a pain in the ass to them:
"Tell me about yourself," Suvit says. "I mean, how did a wet little creep like you ever become a cop in the first place?"
"He was an accomplice to murder."
"Not a bad start," Suvit concedes.
"His mother's father was a close follower of my brother. He and his fellow felon spent a year at my brother's monastery....You don't know my brother. He can dismantle your mind and rebuild it the way some people take clocks apart and put them together again. Afterwards nothing works properly, but the thing still manages to tick. That's what he did with these two."
This book has some great scenes, too many for me to recreate and lots of funny moments like here where Sonchai forces his mother into finally telling him who his father was-an American serviceman who took her back to the States where she went into a culture shock freak out and ran back to Thailand:
"You deprived me of a crack at the presidency of the United States because you didn't like the food? That's very Thai."
"You got a crack at nirvana instead. What kind of Buddhist would you have been if I'd stayed in America?"
I choose to ignore this brilliant riposte. "I could have been an astronaut."
"No you couldn't, you can't stand heights."
"What did he do, what was his profession, what he a drafted man?"
"Drafted. He was going to be a lawyer."
"What? American lawyers are millionaires. I could have been a senator at least."
My mother has dried her eyes. She is a master of abrupt recovery. "Children of American lawyers all die of drug overdoses at an early age."
The whole chapter with the Russian expat former physicist now pimp Andreev Iamskoy is brilliant. I hope he returns in future books. The Buddha was a brilliant salesman because he sold nothing, literally. Now that's funny.
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