Sam Spade in the City of Angels

Fictional farang detectives abound in Bangkok - in novels ranging from the competent to the god-awful - but this is the first memoir by a real one.

"Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye" is the true tale of Warren Olson, as told to writer Stephen Leather, about his decade-long career as a private investigator in the Big Mango.

As he relates in his first chapter, Olson started out as a horse trainer in his native New Zealand, then fetched up as a marketing manager in a hotel in Surin, where he learned Thai, Lao and Khmer - languages that would stand him in good stead in the bars of Bangkok when he set himself up as a gumshoe.

His bread-and-butter cases were, of course, bargirls, and his clients their ever-gullible johns.

In "The Case of the Double-Crossed Dutchman", the book starts off with a bang: "There are a whole host of things I love about living in Thailand: the gorgeous women, the climate, the food, the beaches. But right at the top of the list of things I hate is being pursued at high speed by two motorcyclists with gun-toting pillion passengers."

This is in the course of an investigation into the lovely Thai wife of a fat Dutchman.

She arrives in Thailand for the Songkran holidays and, instead of joining her family in Chiang Mai, promptly shacks up with a young waiter she'd met in a Thai restaurant in Holland. Olsen gets the photographs and a wad of euros from the furious husband.

Most of his cases are of a similar ilk, though sometimes the lover is a lesbian or the potential bride a katoey (transsexual). Olson tells his tales with cynical relish.

The general plot goes that old, fat, ugly farang becomes besotted by beautiful young long-haired bargirl who, (surprise!) doesn't really love him and is craftily emptying his bankbook by a wonderful range of schemes.

To the bitter end, the punter ardently believes that his love is not an ordinary bargirl, that she is "different".

"At that point part of me wants to say that they're all the same, that they are all just hookers hooking, and that the best way to see if a bargirl is lying is to check if her lips are moving. Rule number two: if a bargirl's lips aren't moving, she's preparing her next lie.

 "But I don't tell the clients that, of course. I tell them how much I charge and I give them the number of my bank account and once the money's been transferred I go through the motions."

Other cases are more rewarding: A middle-aged Thai magazine editor, a devout Christian, is hustled out of her life savings by a Canadian conman pretending to be a Protestant minister. Olsen tracked him down, had him thrown in jail and then shook him down for all of his ill-gotten gain.

This was actually his first case and he concludes: "I'd made money and I'd helped someone; a private eye couldn't ask for a better result."

High technology has also changed the scam game. An Englishman phones for help when his Internet penpal, one "Metta Khonkaen", fails to turn up at Heathrow Airport after he has wired her piles of money.

Olson takes on the case and learns that the beauty who had sent photos to the hapless Brit is actually a middle-aged Isaan woman heavily bedecked with gold from a long line of other suitors.

She is arrested, along with her partner, a 65-year-old Belgian scam artist, at a Western Union office.  

Olson is hardly a paragon of virtue. Whore-mongering is his prime motivation for moving to Thailand and he's not above sleeping with the target of one marital investigation when he concludes that she hasn't gone back on the game but is simply out for a night's fun.

Of course, he doesn't tell the client.

The book itself is competently written but badly flawed with multiple duplications. He describes the Thai custom of bridal price over and over again.

At least a half dozen times, he repeats his professional creed: "The client is always right, even if he's wrong." And in hearing the initial stories of his duped clients, he over uses the phrase: "Alarms bells rung in my head."

Still, this is a worthy addition to the voluminous literature on bargirls in that the stories are based on true cases told in just the right cynical world-weary tone.

In the end, Olson is jailed for a trumped up car theft offence and escapes back to New Zealand with his Thai wife and daughter.

We're not given the story behind his marriage. But his detective agency is still in business. If you want to contact them, buy the book.