John Burdett practiced law for 14 years in London and Hong Kong until he was able to retire to write full time. He has lived in France, Spain, Hong Kong and the U.K. and now commutes between Bangkok and Southwest France.His new book is Vulture Peak, the fifth and latest novel in his series featuring Bangkok police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep.
Earlier this month I asked Burdett what he was reading. His reply:
I'm reading Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco: the American Military Adventure in Iraq and The Operators by Michael Hastings (inside story of the Afghan war and how Hastings' reporting brought down General McChrystal). They are research for my next novel which features a Vietnam Vet who cannot resist war. ILearn more about the book and author at John Burdett's website.did not set out to educate myself on how many lives and dollars America has spent on unnecessary wars over the past forty years - but once you start to look into it, the conclusion is pretty depressing.
Perhaps for that reason I have also turned to the classics. About a minute after I bought my iPad 2 I realised I could download just about everything worth reading that had been written by our forefathers from the Guten Project, for nothing. So when I'm not researching I'm free to gorge myself on Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Gibbon, Aesop, Dumas - well, the list is endless. I realised, dangerously, that it is quite possible, now, for me to retreat to that desert island with a single book-size volume, called iPad 2, stuffed with more reading material than it is possible for one man to get through in a lifetime - and, so long as there's a battery charger under the palm tree, never be bored or need to send for more books.
The Page 69 Test: Vulture Peak.
--Marshal Zeringue
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