Vulture Peak

A Royal Thai Detective Novel

By: John Burdett

Narrated by: Stephen Hogan

Nobody knows Bangkok like Royal Thai Police Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, and there is no one quite like Sonchai: a police officer who has kept his Buddhist soul intact - more or less - despite the fact that his job shoves him face-to-face with some of the most vile and outrageous crimes and criminals in Bangkok. But for his newest assignment, everything he knows about his city - and himself - will be a mere starting point.

He’s put in charge of the highest-profile criminal case in Thailand - an attempt to bring an end to trafficking in human organs. He sets in motion a massive sting operation and stays at its center, traveling to Phuket, Hong Kong, Dubai, Shanghai, and Monte Carlo. He draws in a host of unwitting players that includes an aging rock star wearing out his second liver and the mysterious, diabolical, albeit gorgeous co-queenpins of the international body-parts trade: the Chinese twins known as the Vultures. And yet, it’s closer to home that Sonchai will discover things getting really dicey: rumors will reach him suggesting that his ex-prostitute wife, Chanya, is having an affair. Will Sonchai be enlightened enough - forget Buddha, think jealous husband - to cope with his very own compromised and compromising world?

All will be revealed here, in John Burdett’s most mordantly funny, propulsive, fiendishly entertaining novel yet.

©2012 John Burdett (P)2019 Random House Audio

One of the best in the series

I have read the first five books in the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series, though Vulture Peak is the first I listened to through Audible. The narrator, Steve Hogan, was brilliant, bringing Vulture's Peak and its multitude of Thai, Chinese, American, and English characters to life. Vulture's Peak ranks among my favorites in the series, up there with the first, Bangkok 8, and Bangkok Tattoo. Burdett brings back Sonchai's ex-whore wife Chanya in this one. I love her character, ever since she appeared in Bangkok Tattoo. Chanya is pursuing a sociology PhD and shows her prudish English mentor who's the boss. This is not central to the story of Sonchai pursuing perpetrators of the global organ trade, but I liked the addition. I liked all the characters in the novel, even the baddies. I especially liked the golden-hearted whore who nearly steals Sonchai’s heart. She’s a muse to a phantom of the opera-like figure. I regard Burdett as a master of the detective genre. He weaves in tension, suspense, dry wit, Buddhist spirituality, cynical social commentary, and exotic scene in an interesting story, never losing his way. Recommended.