Nine novels that tell the story of heroin and opioid abuse in America

CrimeReads senior editor Dwyer Murphy tagged nine novels that tell the story of heroin and opioid abuse in America. One title on the list:

John Burdett, The Godfather of Kathmandu

Burdett’s long-running Bangkok series is a truly uncanny outlier in the current landscape of global crime fiction. His stories, which straddle cultures, languages, and religions, are vivid hallucinations of daily life in Bangkok, where vice reigns and the locals are fiercely independent thinkers, beholden to no western codes of conduct or morality. In The Godfather of Kathmandu, Burdett’s part-Thai, part-American detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep is caught up in a heroin smuggling ring that brings together Thai police, Tibetan exiles, Chinese loyalists, Americans on the prowl, and hustlers both local and international. The drugs touch all strata of society, and the long history of opium smuggling out of southeast Asia flashes through with a cruel, quick power.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Godfather of Kathmandu.

--Marshal Zeringue