Last Seen In Bangkok

This was supposed to be a review of ‘Last Seen In Bangkok’ by Dominic Lavin. The author was good enough to send me a copy so I started making a few notes. It's been overlooked by both the New York Times and the Guardian for some reason and I enjoy a challenge. Also I’ve been meaning to write something about the Bangkok writing scene and this is a good chance. So first a few thoughts…

There seems to be an endless supply of would-be authors in Bangkok. Expats, sexpats whatever, everybody has a story to tell. Most hang out in bars or guesthouses regaling others with their stories but every now and then the braver ones decide to write it all out in book form. When they’ve knocked it into shape they either make an arrangement with a publisher or publish it themselves.

These writers come in all shapes and sizes. There are ESL teachers conjuring up treatises on Thai/farang relationships between classes and gap-year travelers, stuck on Kao San Road with time on their hands, hoping to follow Alex Garland’s footsteps along the beach. There are paunchy middle-aged guys with laptops in airport lounges dreaming about love affairs with Burmese generals’ beautiful daughters and aging Rambos hunched over keyboards in snowbound log cabins in Wyoming reliving dangerous missions among the Montagnard. A lot of these books seem to be written with a stereotypical expat reader in mind…if there is such a thing. At a minimum they hope to fill a niche. The better ones are very well written. David Young for instance writes finely crafted books. The more established types like Christopher Moore and Dean Barrett write about tough loners shooting and fucking their way through the seedy underbelly of Bangkok.

The genre has evolved, or deteriorated depending on your point of view, to meet changing times. There are dozens of books about learning Thai, understanding Thai ways, how to behave in Thailand, collections of amusing anecdotes about living in Thailand and tips on how to co-exist with Thai girls. For balance there’s The Bangkok Women's Writers Group whose ‘Bangkok Blondes’ covers the expat scene from a Western female’s perspective (Western women have to do something in Thailand). So there’s something to suit all tastes.

Selling the books is harder. They mostly join dozens of similar works on shelves, sell a few hundred copies and disappear. Some good ones get lost in the shuffle. My own humble contribution, ‘Losing the Plot’, being a good example (I’m particularly disappointed in George Clooney. He should have snapped the option up by now.) Obviously self-promotion is the key. Without it very few of these books get much attention from the outside world. Even ‘Private Dancer’ by Stephen Leather, the only real contender in the Bangkok Classics Stakes in my opinion, doesn’t sell well outside Thailand. One of the few standouts is John Burdett’s ‘Bangkok 8’. It’s another thriller set in Bangkok but Burdett raised the intellectual bar a notch or two by pitting a Buddhist cop against an American feminist. He also managed to get a deal with Random House so his book got well reviewed. Still ‘Bangkok 8’ is an exception. Self-published writers have to manage on their own. They have to promote books with little mainstream appeal that don’t fit neatly into any category. Which brings us back to ‘Last Seen in Bangkok’.

The central character is Vinny, an ordinary bloke. He got fed up with Benidorm, fancied something different like. Or perhaps he’d seen the stuff on the BBC about naughty Thai nightlife so he thought why not give it a try. He’s one of those pastey English lads who can’t get excited about pastey English lasses anymore so he finds his way to sleazy old Pattaya with its bars and bargirls, hotels, tourists from China and Russia, lousy beach, fake designer goods, boozy sun-stunned retirees and ‘Are you lookin’ at me?’ types. Vinny feels like he’s died and gone to heaven. He soon meets Jeed the inevitable Thai girlfriend. She makes him feel good about himself. The sex is great. Days drift into each other. Decisions take care of themselves. Until the money runs out and Vinny needs to go back to England to work.

Lavin has an easy down to earth style, nothing too fancy, and the book has plenty of funny moments. A lot of it deals with getting from place to place, how to buy cigarettes and condoms and where to find the most shaggable tarts, which is fine, though I could have used a bit more characterization. Vinny is a nice bloke but he doesn’t exactly leap off the page. We don’t get much idea what he thinks about bigger topics. Things like immigration, reincarnation and geopolitics hardly get a mention. Vinny likes to keep things simple.

After a stint working in the gloom and doom of Manchester the reader is as relieved as Vinny to get back to the exotic Orient though it does take a while to get there. There’s lots of detail about ordering Thai food, dealing with taxi-drivers, checking into hotels etc. that as a jaded veteran I found a bit too slow. But maybe that's the point. There's certainly plenty of useful information here for newbies. Things pick up when Vinny goes back to Thailand with his mate Keith who’s a bit of a cokehead like. They do all the usual hotspots, Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy etc. then it’s back to good old Pattaya before heading off to Samui to get themselves in real trouble. It all ends very badly indeed so in a way it can be regarded as a cautionary tale.

Dominic Lavin went the lulu route, print on demand. It’s expensive and you’re still on your own when it comes to finding readers. But if you think you’ve got a new angle the field is still wide open. Ideally of course you’ll want to make a deal with Asia Books or Bangkok Book House. They are probably the best. They’ll distribute the books for you, advertise them on their websites and get them into bookshops. Not that that is any guarantee of sales so don’t get too excited. The market is pretty saturated.

So why not get stuck in lads? Ignore the published writers and the literary experts. Yes, there are those who say amateurish efforts should never make it into print. Ignore them. Start with a few notes and see what happens. It’s up to you. If worst comes to worst you can always find a cheap printer in Thailand, run off a few hundred copies, hawk them in the bars and wait for the movie contracts to pour in. Just make sure you throw in a few typos and spelling mistakes. It wouldn’t be a proper Bangkok novel without thm.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Last-Seen-Bangkok-Dominic-Lavin/dp/1847539645

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