Michael Dirda

"The telephone book is the interrogator's best friend in these parts. Inserted between boot and perp, it prevents all signs of physical abuse without detracting too much from the point of the exercise." Later, we learn that "for once the jailer has exercised compassion in that he has used padded, hospital-style restrainers instead of his usual chains."

As in a Ross Thomas or Andrew Vachss thriller, Bangkok Tattoo proffers an assortment of dreamers, grotesques and criminals -- not only prostitutes and corrupt cops but also opium addicts, crime lords, tattoo artists, the spirits of the dead, transsexuals, the Yakuza, religious fanatics, even a lesbian CIA operative. One major drug trafficker appears only after he is dead:

"In a room adjacent to the lounge, Joey is embalmed à l'americaine in a characteristic pose from life, sitting in a director's chair holding a mobile to his ear, a cigar in the other hand, an open-neck Gucci shirt and jacket, smart YSL slacks, and multicolored loafers. His huge smile, acrylic in intensity, perfectly fits the house theme. In a neat melding of cultures Mu [his widow] has surrounded him with gold images of the Buddha in his various postures, and electric imitation votive candles flicker everywhere ."

Burdett -- a "nonpracticing lawyer" who now lives in Hong Kong -- is particularly good, too, at evoking the hurly burly of Bangkok, its streets packed with food stalls selling insect delicacies and the almost addictive Thai fruit called durian, the cars stalled in enormous traffic jams, call-in talk shows blasting from radios, gross Americans seeking young flesh and imitation Rolexes, live-sex shows and bars and open-air bazaars:

"The talat (market) is the emotional center, a square acre of green umbrellas and tarps beneath which chilies lie short and wicked on poor women's shawls; chickens cram together dead or alive; ducks grumble in wooden cages; every kind of crab mimes death agonies in plastic bowls or gasps in the heat (both fresh-and saltwater, soft shell or hard); open-air butchers chop up whole buffalo; jackfruit, pineapple, orange, durian, grapefruit, bolts of cheap cotton, every kind of hand tool for the third-world handyman . . . There are even some corrugated iron shacks nearby from the skullduggery school of architecture, joined clandestinely by precarious walkways that cry out for a chase scene, but most of the buildings surrounding the square are three-story shop-houses of the Chinese tradition. The sidewalks provide good clues as to the business of the shops: whole automobile engines pile up outside their ateliers dripping black oil; air-conditioning ducts of all dimensions stand proud outside another; CD rip-offs on stalls, the latest boom boxes block the way outside the stereo store."

Sonchai tells this rambling story in an engaging, ingratiating voice, directly addressing the (presumably American) reader as "farang." Sonchai's attractiveness goes far in softening the novel's violence and grotesquerie. He is loyal to those he admires (his mother, his colonel), kind to his friends (he agrees to help pay for a young man's sex-change operation), attentive to the burdens of karma and the world of spirits. At one point he locates a key figure in the novel by emptying his mind and simply wandering at random until he is led to the proper door. He also longs to meet his American father, whom he has tracked down with help from a friend in the FBI. Perhaps he will in his next adventure.

Open Bangkok Tattoo and you will read on and on, with wide-eyed fascination, some horror or disgust and considerable delight. Still, there's no disguising the fact that the book's a structural mess, with lots of loose ends -- very little is done with the moderate-Muslims subplot, Sonchai uses neither the machine pistol the colonel gives him nor the emergency autodial number he is asked to punch into his cellphone, Chanya had no good reason to withhold the truth about the murder. What's more, there's an almost prurient emphasis on the sex industry, as if Burdett were hoping to titillate as much as shock. Perhaps so. Much of one chapter simply describes the dress codes and working personae of some half-dozen sweet young things in hot pants, see-through blouses and stiletto heels.

By turns sordid, disorienting and, at its heart, accepting and good-natured about our flawed human condition, Bangkok Tattoo is as seductive as Chanya, Nat, Marly, Lalita or any of the other girls at The Old Man's Club. And that's saying something. If you're looking for a good time, look no further. ·

Michael Dirda's e-mail address is dirdam@washpost.com. His weekly discussion of books takes place Wednesdays at 2 p.m. on washingtonpost.com.