Dean Barrett
Dean Barrett first arrived in Thailand as a Chinese linguist with the Army Security Agency during the Vietnam War.
He returned to the United States for his Master's Degree in Asian Studies and later returned to Asia where he has lived for over 20 years in Hong Kong and Bangkok.
Any new book by Dean Barrett is bound to be interesting and well-written, so we took advantage of the fact that since Dragon Slayer (2007, ISBN 978-0-9788888-0-0), his latest, is broken up into three novellas, it would be the perfect read for a grueling 16 hour plane ride home.
If you’re like us, you go back and forth between sleeping and staying awake, which makes it difficult to finish an entire book in one read, while living life large at 30,000 feet.
Barrett’s novellas were perfect for the trip, and they encompass themes familiar to his longtime readers: the Vietnam era, Chinese culture, and the supernatural.
The first of the novellas, “Dragon Slayer,” is set during the Vietnam War in 1968.
American enlisted men are in a helicopter gunship firing back at Vietcong below when their chopper is violently sucked into a mysterious vortex.
When they finally emerge they soon realize they have landed in southern China in 1857.
They then find themselves fighting yet another war, aiding villagers and Taiping women warriors fighting to the death with the Manchus and their merciless allies, both Chinese regulars and foreign pirates.
Barrett manages to capture the anti-establishment, adventurous attitude of the young Americans who seem not too fazed about where or when they are so long as they think the Army can find a way to get their paychecks to them.
Some of the more fascinating elements concern the mechanics of waging a war 1850-style, and Barrett’s clearly done his homework in explaining the deployment of the materiél of the era.
The second offering, “Bones of the Chinamen,” is set in southern China in 1862 inside a barracoon, a stifling, prison-like warehouse where Chinese were kept before being shipped out to a life of slavery and death on Peru’s Chincha Islands, where coolies eked out a fatal and short existence mining ammonia-charged bird guano.
Narrated in the first person by a young, guilt-ridden Chinese barracoon employee, the novella is reminiscent, in terms of introspective horror, of some of the best writing of Edgar Allen Poe.
Finally, in “Golden Dragon” a group of violent and predudiced high school students in a remote town in Maine slaughter the Chinese owner and employees of a Chinese restaurant.
And they seem about to get away with it until a beautiful Chinese woman appears.
This is more a traditional ghost story but with plenty of conflict and gore, as well as unexpected twists and turns, presenting once again evidence of this talented author’s intimate knowledge of things Chinese and of his ability to tell a good story.
“Revenge is a soup best eaten cold,” goes the old adage, and Barrett’s sense of the dramatic here combines with supernatural elements that bring to mind the work of H.P. Lovecraft, in a story that continually leaves the reader in anxious anticipation that justice take its course.
As the Thais say, “som nam na!” (serves you right!).
His novel, Kingdom of Make-Believe, set in Thailand, Hong Kong, and New York, is a masterfully written descent into the maelstrom of Bangkok night life and Golden Triangle drug intrigue.
Barrett’s descriptions eschew the mundane, as in this characterization of the visage of Suntaree, Kingdom’s female protagonist:
“It was a face of unusual proportions, poised somewhere between handsome and beautiful, yet one which reflected strength of character and natural charm without conforming to the expected norms and confining symmetry of visual appeal.”
Like Moore, Barrett has created a detective character, “Chinaman,” the protagonist of the New York-based Murder in China Red.
Barrett has penned another Thai-based novel, Skytrain to Murder, as well as a pictorial, Thailand: Land of Beautiful Women.
In addition to writing fiction, Barrett is also a historian.
His Don Quixote in China is a wistful memoir of his search for a place in China he’s not quite certain is real or mythological.
Murder at the Horny Toad Bar and other Outrageous tales of Thailand (2004, ISBN 0-9661899-8-1), is an acerbic, funny, and irreverent collection of short stories, poems, and biographical anecdotes.
Poetry and Bangkok nightlife might seem, to most of us, to go together as well as peanut butter and mustard, not to say that we haven’t heard an occasional besotted punter wax poetic about some Isaan damsel in white gogo boots. Fact is, prose has been the most popular literary vehicle for describing contemporary Bangkok, and it takes, we think, a brave man with all his bills paid to write a book of poetry about life in this city of angels.
Dean Barrett has taken the bull by the horns (or better said, the tuktuk by the handles) and written a magnificent book of poetry that chronicles the life lived by thousands (millions?) of Thais and expats, The GoGo Dancer who Stole My Viagra & other Poetic Tragedies of Thailand (2005, ISBN 0-9661899-9-X).
We first read the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, autobiographical The Silly Old Man with the Young Thai Girl in the Texas Lone Star Saloon back in 2004, and eagerly waited for it to appear in book form.
It’s here, along with witty, sardonic, funny, and thought-provoking poems concerning lifestyle and philosophies.
Fans of poetry may detect a bit of Robert Service or a touch of Charles Bukowski, but they’re really all Dean Barrett, who embodies today’s Bangkok just as much as those writers characterized Los Angeles and the Frozen North.
GoGo Dancer is worth a long-time read, and you can buy it at your local bookstore without having to pay a bar fine.
Barrett’s Thailand-situated books include:
- Images of Thailand (1982? with photos by Barrett, and text by William Warren, out of print)
- Girls of Thailand (non-fiction, out of print)
- Kingdom of Make-Believe (1999, ISBN 0-9661899-0-6)
- Memoirs of a Bangkok Warrior (1999, ISBN 0-9661899-2-2)
- Thailand, Land of Beautiful Women (non-fiction, 2001, ISBN 0-9661899-3-0)
- Skytrain to Murder (2003)
- Murder at the Horny Toad Bar and other Outrageous tales of Thailand (2004, ISBN 0-9661899-8-1)
- The GoGo Dancer who Stole My Viagra & other Poetic Tragedies of Thailand (2005, ISBN 0-9661899-9-X)
Barrett’s other Asian-related books include:
- Hong Kong's Aberdeen: Catching the Last Rays (1976, out of print)
- Images of Hong Kong (1982? with photos by Barrett, and text by Fred Airmentrout, out of print)
- Hangman's Point (1998,ISBN 0-9661899-1-4)
- Mistress of the East (2001, ISBN 1-56201-228-2)
- Murder in China Red (2002, ISBN 0-9661899-4-9)
- Don Quixote in China: the Search for Peach Blossom Spring (non-fiction, 2004, ISBN 0-9661899-7-3)
- Dragon Slayer (2007, ISBN 978-0-9788888-0-0)
Visit Barrett’s websites at: www.deanbarrettthailand.com and www.deanbarrettmystery.com