Vulture peak john burdett ebook

Sign in to see the full collection. Fiction Mystery Thriller. Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Book Release date: January 10, Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again. The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser.

Learn more here. You've reached the maximum number of titles you can currently recommend for purchase. John Burdett. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Media Vulture Peak. Save Not today. Format ebook. His American stereotypes continue to irritate me as well, all of the political advisers in the novel are amoral American opportunists. I think I might skip the next installment of the series and focus on more accomplished mystery writers like Charles Willeford, James Ellroy, and Patricia Highsmith.

Feb 29, Lexie rated it really liked it Shelves: fiction. Every 'Bangkok' novel is a delight, and is written from a most unique perspective -- that of a male, middle-aged, married, Buddhist, Thai homicide detective who manages to keep his heart, soul, and mind intact through the horrors of his work and the all-pervasive corruption within the police force.

Cultures and sub-cultures clash -- in this case, Thai, American, and Chinese -- and John Burdett spares us no aspect of the universal human condition. Humour abounds, too; there is genuine comedy in B Every 'Bangkok' novel is a delight, and is written from a most unique perspective -- that of a male, middle-aged, married, Buddhist, Thai homicide detective who manages to keep his heart, soul, and mind intact through the horrors of his work and the all-pervasive corruption within the police force.

Humour abounds, too; there is genuine comedy in Burdett's writing. An example: an American governmental agent remarks to Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the Thai homicide officer, about the American idea of happiness: " I wish you'd been around when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution. They've got three hundred million of us chasing our own asses in the pursuit of that same happiness you Buddhists already knew didn't exist I did always wonder why it was the pursuit of happiness -- like you've never really expected to get there.

Kind of a Godot thing right at the center of the American mind. The best is always yet to come, yet to come, yet to come Jun 28, Don Schecter rated it did not like it. The plots of volumes were amazingly fresh and made me look for the next book.

But Godfather of Kathmandu was a different book. Mystery took a back seat to the hero's investigation of his religious beliefs and I found myself learning a great deal about comparative Buddhism. Vulture Peak was a further departure: I stayed with it because I liked Sonchai, his extended family of characters, and the Bangkok ambience from the first four books.

After waiting through two-thirds of the book for the st The plots of volumes were amazingly fresh and made me look for the next book. After waiting through two-thirds of the book for the story to pick up pace, I found the ending singularly unsatisfying. The secondary characters popped in and out as window dressing and the main characters got their just desserts in the dark, off in the distance.

I enjoyed the first four books, but it's not just the main character who has grown world-weary, the author seems to be tiring as well. If you choose to read these fascinating books, I suggest you read them in order. Oct 17, Jim rated it liked it Shelves: fiction , fiction-asian. I look forward the arrival of each addition to Burdett's Thai series, even the somewhat weaker ones, such as this one. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is caught up in another mystery, the murder of three in a mountaintop estate that forces the detective to enter the dark world of organ sales.

Of course he meets seductive women, trolls the underbelly of Thai and also Chinese society, and does the bidding of his powerful corrupt boss. It is scary actually to think that this type of thing actually goes on, I look forward the arrival of each addition to Burdett's Thai series, even the somewhat weaker ones, such as this one. It is scary actually to think that this type of thing actually goes on, but no reason to doubt it either. Sonchai also has to deal with his relationship his Chantal, his wife, who has turned to academic pursuits.

The story is fairly straightforward, and maybe not quite as mysterious as some of the other entries; hard to avoid in series writing. Still, it was enjoyable, more so after about halfway through. Burdett seemed a bit tired of the whole affair at then end. Jan 27, Betsy rated it did not like it. What a disappointment. I had so been looking forward to the latest in Burdett's Bangkok series.

The story is disjointed with long rambling monologues and Wikipedia entries that do nothing to move the story forward or make us care about the characters. Familiar characters such as Lek and Vikorn drop in oh so briefly but then drop out again. We see glimpses of the Sonchai that I so enjoyed in the other books, but in too many instances it was hard to figure out exactly what he was doing and why.

I What a disappointment. I wouldn't recommend this one to anyone who hasn't read Burdett - stick to the first three in the series that were so readable and fresh.

If you are a Burdett fan and can't stay away, go for it - but don't expect too much. Another one like this will put me off the series for good. Feb 08, Larry rated it really liked it. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a detective in Bangkok who works for a spectacularly corrupt and cynical superior. The superior, Colonel Vikorn, is in charge of a crackdown on the illegal body part trade at the same time that he seeks to make a fortune from it.

Jitpleecheep, who is a very funny narrator and guide to a surreal world, has to be very careful while overseeing a sting operation. The fact that he has a Buddhist monk-like except in matters of sexual activity orientation on life that means h Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a detective in Bangkok who works for a spectacularly corrupt and cynical superior.

The fact that he has a Buddhist monk-like except in matters of sexual activity orientation on life that means he's not totally corrupt makes him consistently interesting. The book, latest in a series, is like a cross between Kojak and Kafka, as a reviewer once said about William Marshall's Yellowthread Street series.

Jan 27, Chris rated it liked it Shelves: mystery-thailand. Disturbing, weird, but still a page turner. This was like the first two novels in the series in terms of the flow of the narrative. Burdett does a lot of philosophizing about religion, capitalism, etc. The Chinese twins are pure evil and Sonchai meets some interesting police colleagues from China. You never know where the plot is going in this series.

We jet to Dubai, Nice,and China tracking an organ ring but is that what we are really after? One never knows in this series. Given the duplicity o Disturbing, weird, but still a page turner.

Given the duplicity of Songchai's boss you never quite know. Lots of humor and irony with the girls of the night as well. Another very strange ending. Jul 10, Mark rated it really liked it. The latest of John Burdett's Bangkok series. As before the writing is good and Burdett exhibits a real understanding of Thai life. I enjoy his books a lot, but the mysteries usually involve a very seamy world that I would not normally be attracted to.

I think Burdett combines many British writers skill with U. Nov 09, Alicen rated it it was amazing. A mesmerizing and disturbingly wild ride of a mystery novel. This is 5 in Burdett's Thai cop Jitpleecheep series and is definitely one of his best although I recommend starting with 1 - "Bangkok 8".

I love the way that Burdett weaves in critiques of Western culture and our views on life and its meaning while taking us in to strange and mysterious parts of Eastern cultures.

Highly recommended! Feb 09, Angela rated it liked it. Another book in the Sochai Jitpleecheep series. Fan of the series, not the best of the series, felt like it could have used another look see from the editor, language was awkward at times.

The case in this book focuses on the black market for transplant organs. Aug 26, Jesus Portillo rated it really liked it. Smart, funny, gruesome, and well written. Jan 30, Sal Fernz rated it it was amazing. The depth and detail of the narrative is astonishing. Aug 30, Shuriu rated it really liked it. After our son died, she had nothing much to do, so she studied sociology because I told her it was about people and society. She has an excellent brain and was at the top of her classes.

She let that pass, at considerable cost After our son died, she had nothing much to do, so she studied sociology because I told her it was about people and society. She let that pass, at considerable cost to her peace of mind and personality -- you might say she sold an organ, metaphorically speaking. In former times, DFR [Dear Farang Reader], you used exactly the same double-talk to justify the opium and slave trades.

The other world religion is an insane collection of primitive magic and mumbo-jumbo, with cadavers resurrecting and walking around with holes in them, lepers suddenly healing and the blind suddenly seeing, virgins giving birth and snakes that talk. Since it's all a blatant lie, something has to be done to keep the faithful dropping coins onto the plate, or the economic model on which the whole pious edifice is based will collapse in less than a generation.

Lourdes is the most important. Of course, since there are no miracles, you have to have a large collection of people willing to lie to themselves. We are talking about the terminally ill, of course. And most of the rest of the world, even working-class England, was in the same boat. The British were almost as addicted as the Chinese. You see, opium was even cheaper than gin. According to this economist, even the great Wilberforce, whom the Brits like to cite as the honorable Englishman who got slavery abolished, he too was an opium addict.

It was a way of keeping twenty million unemployed men docile. As soon as opium was suppressed, China tore itself apart in revolution -- and the U. After all, economists are there to forecast the future. See, his punch line was: the world economy has positioned itself in such a way that almost everyone is going to be unemployed by the middle of this century.

The American sucker-consumer is now bankrupt for the next fifty years, and there's no way Asians are going to waste their money en masse on toys like iPods -- hoarding is hardwired in every head east of Suez. Americans are strange people. They allow themselves to be bled white by gangsters for generation after generation and call it freedom.

But that blissful ignorance may be in its endgame. The consumer economy is already dead -- what we're experiencing right now is its wake. What do you think governments are going to use to keep everyone docile when the shit finally hits the fan? Not opium. Opium is an ugly way of dying. 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 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.