If you like your crime fiction with a big dollop of Buddhism, you can’t do any better than John Burdett’s Bangkok series. Just finished The Bangkok Asset and share a few excerpts here:

“Buddhism is too difficult for most people and Christianity is an incoherent jumble of largely Roman superstition that has nothing to do with the Jew called Jesus.”

“Sorcery works. Human sacrifice is behind all great powers. Look at the U.S.: Twelve million native Americans slaughtered, that’s more than Hitler or Stalin—and look how well they’ve done. The entire nation is testimony to the efficacy of the practice.”

“Computing power among the masses is already extraordinary—there was a degree of paranoia about that in the (Chinese Communist) Party, but it turns out the little people prefer to share porn, gossip, and insults and listen to junk music. Its a fantastic way of shutting them up, like a voluntary electronic gulag. No danger at all except from organized Islamists.”

“The West is bankrupt in every sense, on every level,” she said. “Money is out of control and so are people’s heads. Over the next decade technologically empowered civil unrest will force most countries to militarize their police forces even more—much more—than they have already. And when the West goes, the myth of democracy goes with it. It will be dictatorship or chaos, and humans prefer order to freedom when it comes to the crunch.”

“The Earth still looks beautiful on a map. I knew, though, that if one were to zoom in on any town or city and switch to camera view, the gorgeous electronic colors would disappear and the screen would show dormitory towns, pollution, shopping malls, and traffic jams no matter which country you chose; our planet these days is best viewed from space.”