Corgi Bangkok Tattoo, English edition

Bangkok, rich in history and spirituality, crowded with temples, markets, and canals, is also a city shrouded in shadows. Polluted and corrupt, infamous as the sex capital of the world, it is a place where wealth, poverty, and unimaginable evil walk hand in hand.

In District 8, the underbelly of Bangkok's crime world, a dramatically mutilated body is found in a hotel bedroom. It looks bad: the corpse, who has been flayed, is CIA. And it gets worse when the self-confessed murderer is the beautiful Chanya, the best 'working girl' at The Old Man's Club, a brothel owned jointly by Sonchai's mother and his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn. Alerted by Sonchai, Vikorn quickly concocts a cover-up that involves an Al-Qaeda terrorist cell located in a southern Thai border town where, since 9/11, the CIA has also had a covert presence.

So far so good: but the truth will be harder to come by, and it will require Sonchai to find an ever more delicate balance between his ambition (western) and his Buddhism (eastern), while he navigates Bangkok's drug dealers, prostitutes, bad cops, even worse military generals, and the pitfalls of his own melting heart.

Crowded with astonishing characters and infused with the authentic, hallucinogenic atmosphere of Bangkok, this literary thriller offers needle-sharp observations about the clash of cultures when East meets West.