'Cracking East-meets-West thriller introducing a half-Thai, half-American cop whose Buddhist beliefs are as important as his forensic skills. Terrific'

'A stunning thriller! Bangkok 8 is suspense at its best: a masterfully written tale set in a world that's perfectly evoked and populated with compelling, flesh and blood characters'

'Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvellously unique, the setting is intoxication and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't put it down'

'Read this book, savor the language - it's the last and the most compelling word in thrillers'

'John Burdett infuses the plot with enough suspense, detail and dry Asian insight to keep readers rapt as the story careens about the bars and brothels of Thailand, taking in its flesh trade and cut-rate plastic surgery parlours and ending in a climax with a fittingly Buddhist twist. Bangkok 8 is highly recommended'

'The real star is Bangkok, a city in mutation, capital of sex and gender surgery, against whose lurid foreground most characters appear puny. It's a strangely tender, Utopian vision...that combines SF clarity with something more fluid, as non-negotiable and irrational as a dream'

'Quirky, talky and highly entertaining... But all this smart talk does not diminish the overwhelming presence of the sprawling, chaotic, illogical city with its jampacked bars and impassable streets, that invigorates this remarkable novel and makes it something to enjoy for its sheer bravado'

'It is not unusual for the Western detective story to be transported into Far Eastern surroundings. But it is the rare novel that offers a seductive and engaging local protagonist of such a story, penned by an Easterner. This does both with resounding success, as well as adding a dimension not typically found in the genre'

'Impeccably researched, this is sometimes poetic, often exotic and totally hardcore'

'Wow! Partly 'normal' thriller and partly off-the-beaten-track Buddhist narrative ... An original and gripping novel'

'John Burdett is purely and simply a wonderful writer, a genuine grown-up at work in a genre mostly populated by arrested adolescents...Bangkok 8 is a tour de force'

'To say that Bangkok 8 in set in Bangkok is an understatement: it is suffused with the cooking smells, mired in the traffic jams and entangled in the bare limbs of the sex workers... not that the novel is slow going. Bangkok 8 goes from 0 to 60 in about 10 pages'

'Like a modern-day Indiana Jones adventure written by Evelyn Waugh...One of this season's cleverest and most stylish entertainments'

'Engaging, warm, humorous and poignant at the same time'

'This book is amazing . . . A must read'