At Home Amid the Red Lights

BANGKOK, Oct. 24 — As John Burdett ambles down a street packed with girlie bars, he passes two women in skimpy outfits waving their hands excitedly and calling out, “John! John!”

There are plenty of johns around — this is Soi Cowboy after all, one of the better-attended red-light districts in Bangkok — but the bar girls are waving to John with a capital J, their author friend and confidant. Mr. Burdett waves back.

Mr. Burdett, a 56-year-old former lawyer turned novelist, has spent the past seven years chatting up hundreds of bar girls as inspiration for his trilogy, soon to be a quartet, of detective thrillers set in Bangkok’s netherworld.

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New York Times

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John Burdett's Bangkok