New Fear Unblocked

My honest review of Sean O’Leary’s Bangkok Girl.

Once again, a book I’ve just read is leaving me speechless. Maybe it’s just the seriousness of the theme paired with a pace that flows really well and doesn’t let it get too heavy, but I’m not sure about which words I’m supposed to use to describe it.

Lee Jenkins is an Australian private investigator who lives and works in Bangkok, and even before reading the book I thought that he would have had his hands full. He receives a request from a rich Australian businessman to find his daughter who has been missing for a few weeks, and after a brief moment where he turns the job down (because the refusal of the call, as Joseph Campbell teaches us) he decides to help. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that he’s “softly forced” to help, but the reality of things doesn’t change: he’s into something that will shortly turn up to be so big.

Because of course Zoe, the girl he’s trying to find, has ended up in a very bad place, as she’s been employed as a sex slave by the Yakuza in Tokyo. Lee is playing against a very powerful opponent, but also against himself as he’s constantly on medications for schizophrenia. And I guess all the stress involved in fighting such a monster doesn’t help keeping your inner demons at bay.

Here lies the only regret I have about this book: halfway through the book Lee finds himself in a very bad place in Tokyo, without access to his meds. As much as I can see how the way he reacts can be induced by his medical condition, I would have loved it to be a little bit more explicit. But maybe this is just me, how I always tend to nitpick when I can’t find obvious stuff that rubs me the wrong way. Sean O’Leary, if you’re reading this, please know that it should be taken as a weird form of compliment.

Also, another great plus of the book (at least for me) is Kanika, the thai-boxer/motorcyclist colleague that helps Lee with all his cases, she really kicks asses and I love reading characters like her. It’s kind of my weakness when it comes to a book.

What will really stay with me after reading this book is the description of how the Yakuza takes a normal person and turns them into their slave. I don’t have enough knowledge about Japanese mafia to know whether what is described in the book is true or not, all I can say is that it’s scary as hell. One of the worst things that can happen to a person is losing their own free will, and this is how the stuff is carried out in The Bangkok Girl. And also, incidentally, the same reason why heroin is one of the very few drugs I’ve never been willing to try.

Summing it up, The Bangkok Girl carried me away from a very busy and intense Summer, at least for a while, and I’m so glad I had the chance to read an action packed book set in the Eastern part of the world, for once. For sure another read I won’t easily forget.