Bangkok Noir: Crime Fiction in the City of Angels

Thailand's capital is home to a vibrant community of writers exploring the city's vast underbelly.

Arriving in Bangkok is a jolt to the senses. Sweltering heat. Pungent smells. Gridlock traffic. Food vendors sharing broken sidewalks with stray dogs scavenging for scraps. And when the sun falls, rather than things cooling down, the atmosphere thickens as the city's legendary nightlife begins to stir. This heady brew creates an ideal atmosphere for noir fiction, which is thriving in the city.

"The city is hot, dark and sticky. It offers plenty of darkness and hardly cares how it's portrayed so long as the dollars keep coming in."

"A lot of foreigners, most of them men, come to Bangkok to roll around in it," Tom Vater, a Bangkok-based journalist and author of the Detective Maier Mystery series, told The Diplomat. "Bangkok Noir owes its existence to this rather unique situation."

To be precise, the genre that has found a home in Bangkok is not noir in the classical sense. "It's really crime fiction set in Bangkok. But the term Bangkok Noir has a nice ring to it," said Vater, who co-founded Asia's English-language crime fiction publisher Crime Wave Press. "Bangkok is perfect for crime fiction," added John Burdett, bestselling author of the Sonchai Jitpleecheep series, which centers on a Thai Buddhist police detective. "Everyone has heard of it, many have visited, but very few have penetrated its mysteries, which are protected by an almost impenetrable language and alphabet, not to mention the thousand and one superstitions that can come up from behind just when you thought you were making progress."

Whatever the literary label, Bangkok has spawned a community of expat writers inspired by the city's dark side. For newcomers, the street life alone provides the necessary ingredients to set the scene. But those who dig deeper discover a well of social, political and cultural forces that the city's best crime writers use to add layers of complexity to their work. One of the most significant has been Bangkok's frenzied push to modernize.

Christopher G. Moore, a Canadian former lawyer and author of the Vincent Calvino series, first arrived in Bangkok more than 30 years ago. "Crime fiction authors in Bangkok have been among the first to identify and track the knock-on effect in crime, which has followed the incredible rise of megacities around the world," he said. The city "has morphed from a city of languid canals… into a high-tech, social-media-active, modern urban center with an educated middle class. That is a lot of change in one generation."

These words ring true to anyone who has visited. Luxury shopping malls abut crumbling apartment blocks. BMWs share congested roads with motorcycle taxis and tuk-tuks. "The law and infrastructure have lagged, trying to play catch up, creating conflicts amongst various groups," Moore says. "Riding the waves of rapid changes are new and old criminals locked in a battle to control turf. For a noir writer, the corruption, double-dealing, and inequality provide source material for characters caught in the vice of power, charting their futile attempts to escape their fate."