Oh Dr. Siri how I love you! This is another excellent book in this series. Colin Cotterill has such a gift for creating not only complex and wonderful characters, but also his descriptions of the landscape and atmosphere in this story are so vivid.Whenever I finish one of these books I always fee...
At 72, Dr. Siri yearns to drink coffee, tend his garden, and read his books. But instead of a pension and honorable retirement for this combat surgeon to the Pathet Lao, he is now, in 1976, the chief and only medical examiner in Laos– the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos– shortly after the c...
Comrade shamans. The communist party of the new Democratic Republic of Laos has issued a directive: “The spirits will have to toe the line.” This is the second installment in my favorite mystery series, which is set in Laos in 1977 and features Dr. Siri Paiboun--"the reluctant national coroner,...
Rating: 3.75* of fiveThe Publisher Says: Dr. Siri Paiboun, reluctant national coroner of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, is summoned to a remote location in the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current government had hidden out in caves, waiting to assum...
A blind retired dentist has been run down by a logging truck on the street in Vientiane just opposite the post office. His body is duly delivered to the morgue of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the official and only coroner of Laos. At the age of seventy-four, Dr. Siri is too old to be in awe of the new commu...
Rating: 4* of five The Publisher Says: In Vientiane, a booby-trapped corpse, intended for Dr. Siri, the national coroner of Laos, has been delivered to the morgue. In his absence, only Nurse Dtui’s intervention saves the lives of the morgue attendants, visiting doctors, and Madame Daeng, Dr. Siri...
suggests it was preceded by a “down” and the gentleman hadn’t dared lay his precious body on a mattress with such an obvious history. He’d spent the night in a chair wrapped in a blanket he’d brought with him watching the minutes crawl by on his luminous watch face. His personal assistant was a C...
Room for Rant (real estate) I sat with the dogs on my veranda. Gogo was almost back to her old disagreeable self, growling at the other two. Sticky was chewing a shoe I didn’t recognize. Lieutenant Chompu was seated opposite me, raising his feet every time mange-ridden Beer nuzzled up to him. “Ju...
No plane, no bus, no donkey cart ever left on time in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. Timetables were in the same section of the government bookshop as legends and folklore. They were fictional beasts that lied without trepidation. Yet, despite this knowledge, no passengers ever came pr...
It was less than two kilometres from Mahosot but urgency made the distance more daunting. Civilai drove directly into the temple grounds and stopped only half a metre from the ordination hall that guarded the pillar. Despite all the noise they’d made, there was nobody around to chastise them. The...
The stink of excrement was all around him. His wrists and ankles were bound. When he turned his head and moved his mouth, one side of his face cracked like partridge eggshells underfoot. He could smell his own dried blood. He didn’t know where he was or what was expected of him. As a soldier he h...