American Dean Barrett, who has also released a book of poetry: The Go Go Dancer Who Stole My Viagra. Poems include 'Beneath Condom- Grey Skies'.

Most 'sexpat lit' is self-published, sold mainly to fellow Thai-based Westerners, and incorporates a rigid cast of cliches - corrupt cops, gold-digging sex kittens, grizzled Vietnam vets. But the British lawyer-turned- novelist John Burdett (right) has tried to raise the bar by emphasising plot over location.

"I set out to write an original crime fiction novel. The dirty backdrop of Bangkok and the bar scene is just the apparatus I'm using to twist a genre," says the 55-year-old Londoner, whose novels Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo have sold in the hundreds of thousands in 20 countries.

His stories are told from a Thai perspective, narrated by devoutly

Buddhist detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. "Bangkok is how the west once was, when there was a certain criminal class," says Burdett. "Look at Sherlock Holmes's London, or Chandler's Los Angeles. That's Bangkok today."

He admits, however, that the Thai capital cannot be described faithfully without at least scratching at its seedy underbelly. In Bangkok Tattoo, bargirl Chanya is tripping on opium. Her silk dress that barely manages "to cover nipples and butt " is soaked in blood. The corpse of her lover, an American CIA agent, sprawls on the floor, his severed penis sits on the bedside table. And that's just the first two pages.