Zombies on the beat

 Dead Bangkok
BY JD VILLINESS
PUBLISHED BEACHFRONT PRESS
AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK AT AMAZON.COM

Novels about Thailand by expat writers usually fall into the private-eye genre or “I-got-fleeced-and-dumped-by-a-bargirl” memoirs.
In “Dead Bangkok”, JD Villiness has come up with something much more original. Drawing blood from the zombie apocalypse genre, the author has concocted an intoxicating blend of gallows humour and gut-wrenching horror.
There is an intelligence at work here that defies many of the genre’s comic-book conventions: “We were effectively in a war zone, and an overwhelming sense of freedom overtook me. There would be no more bills to pay. No more job to show up to. A man’s worth would be measured by how well he could swing a machete and by whatever he could manage to loot.”
The action reaches the boiling point when the narrator, his girlfriend Nok, and a drug dealer named Vato head for Pattaya, that seaside town whose economic engine is lubed by monetary sex. This is another of the novel’s original suits. As the realisation sinks in that a deadly plague has infected almost everyone, the only people left unscathed are those who are already stoned. When it’s the survival of the wasted, Pattaya makes for a perverse promised land.
Nok, by turns surly and maternal, obsessed with food and gold, comes off as a genuinely Thai rural character with a “skill set most survivalists would envy. She could start a fire with sticks, spot fruit in the trees from far away, and if I wanted a coconut, she would just kick off her flip-flops and climb a tree like a monkey. She was the girl you would
 want to be stranded on an island with.”
The novel does not skimp on visceral horror but often imbues it with a cinematic quality: “It was like watching a Burmese python unhinge its own jaw so it could swallow larger prey.”
Much of the snappy and witty dialogue had me chuckling. After the narrator comes up with some wild-eyed survivalist plans, like turning a tuk-tuk into a Persian death chariot, Vato said to him: “You know that guy at the party who does way too much coke and starts coming up with all kinds of great ideas of s**t to do but just sits there and does more coke?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re becoming that guy.”
When the novel does flirt with the bargirl genre, it’s only to lampoon it: “If getting dressed up in lingerie and choked to death by ladyboys was your thing, you were in good company.”
The author’s knowledge of the Thai supernatural is formidable. Whether it’s baby dolls hanging from bumpers as talismans, or detailing how souls are sent to Yama, the lord of the dead, or running down a pantheon of phantoms dwelling in water and rice fields, this is a primer for Thai Occult 101. Most original of all is the “baby ghost” who serves as both the narrator’s helper and tormentor, often ridiculing him by dredging up obscene insults from the narrator’s own mind.
Other than confusing Koh Phi Phi for Koh Pha-ngan as the site of the Full Moon Party, I could not catch him out on any other local details. With e-books the advantage is that the author can continually do updates.
End-of-the-world sagas, with their carnage and virulence, work best when they reaffirm our humanity and dignity, for that’s all anyone has left, save for a machete and a bag of smack if you’re in this alternate universe. Far be it from Villiness to offer any corny musings on the brotherhood of man. This narrator has his own riff on a swan song. “It was part of some deeply embedded desire not to be found dead with crap in my pants. Back home, the same desire had led me into an agreement with a buddy that if one of us died, the other would go to the deceased’s apartment and throw away all of the dead guy’s porn collection before his mom could find it.”
If this is the end of the world, maybe it’s better to die laughing – an apt sentiment in the Land of Smiles.
Most of the plot strands are woven together into a tight noose. The supernatural elements are actually grounded in neurology and the affliction is part of a wider conspiracy (maybe not too surprising for fans of “The X Files”, but when they did ever feature the Thai “filth ghost”?) 
Towards the end, Dead Bangkok revels in a little too much gross-out horror and faecal matter for my stomach lining’s sake, while the relationship between Nok and the narrator seems undernourished. But with the plot racing along in fourth gear these blemishes could well remain blurs for most readers.
All in all, this is a harrowing and humorous, rocket-paced yarn, embroidered with enough Thai-specific details to keep it real. For the most part, the psychological and spiritual underpinnings – surfing a few brain waves of Philip K Dick – make the fantastical seem all too credible.

   MORE TO READ
  Jim Algie’s latest book is Tuttle Travel Pack Thailand. More info at www.BizarreThailand.com.