CURSE OF THE POGO STICK, 5th Dr. Siri Laos mystery

CURSE OF THE POGO STICK (Dr. Siri Paiboun #5)
COLIN COTTERILL
Soho Crime
$14.00 trade paper, available now

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’s fiancée. 

On his way back from a communist party meeting in the north, Dr. Siri is kidnapped by seven female Hmong villagers under the direction of the village elder so that he will—in the guise of Yeh Ming, the thousand-year-old shaman with whom he shares his body—exorcise the headman’s daughter whose soul is possessed by a demon, and lift the curse of the pogo stick.


My Review: Dr. Siri Paiboun is my role model for growing older. I want to be as cantankerous and unafraid as he is, and as forgiving and tolerant as he is, and marry someone I'm in love with like he does.

Who am I kidding? I'd like any of those things NOW, except the marriage thing, which no thank you, I remember that too well.

So this is the fifth book in the series, and the action takes place late in 1977 into 1978. Siri's seventy-three. The reason I'm reviewing a book so late in the series is simple: I want to tell everyone that, contrary to established custom, the series isn't sagging, and the sleuthing isn't drooping. Siri's believability is quite as firm as it was, meaning if you didn't buy in from the get-go, you won't be in now either. I love our secondary characters quite a lot, and am invested in the world of Dtui and Phosy and Geung as much as Siri and Daeng and Civilai. It's just too much fun to perch on the back of the lilac police Vespa, pull my scarf over my nose and mouth, and whip along the trafficless roads around Vientiane to chase malefactors!

Now that's one helluva mental picture, isn't it? But in this book, in this series, your fat old stiff-jointed American correspondent here can do exactly that. AND solve a crime. (Sort of, there really isn't a mystery-novel crime to solve in this book...so what, though?) I get to travel to the Hmong Otherworld! I am invited to an illegal Buddhist wedding! And through it all, my green-eyed hobbit-sized impish cicerone, Dr. Siri, sees how true and marvelous the world is, how little in it matters except being present and available and kind.

Rightness. Completing one's journey and, thereby, completing the journeys of others. I hope all of us are able to say, looking at our last dawn, that we did that very thing, at least once.


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ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS, 4th Dr. Siri Laotian Mystery

ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS (Dr. Siri Laos Mysteries #4)
COLIN COTTERILL

Rating: -14,975* of five

The Publisher Says: 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 communist bureaucrats for whom he now works. He identifies the corpse, helped by the letter in the man’s pocket. But first he must decipher it; it is written in code and invisible ink. The dentist’s widow explains that the enigmatic letters and numbers describe chess moves, but they are unlike any chess symbols Siri has previously encountered. With the help of his old friend, Civilai, now a senior member of the Laos Politburo; Nurse Dtui (“Fatty”); Phosy, a police officer; and Aunt Bpoo, a transvestite fortune-teller, Dr. Siri solves the mystery of the note and foils a plot to overthrow the government of Laos.

My Review: Dr. Siri and his best pal since jungle-fighting revolutionary youth, Comrade Civilai the Politburo senior cadre and all-around curmudgeon, uncover a major problem in the course of an investigation into the death of an old blind dentist whose habit of coming by bus to Vientiane, the capital, to pick up a letter written in invisible ink every week is interrupted by a runaway logging truck. The widow, far from grieving, is damn near slobbering to get the letter away from Siri. This makes him wonder....

So Siri, Civilai, Nurse Dtui, and Comrade Policeman Phosy (Mr. Geung, the Down-syndrome-having morgue assistant, is still recovering from dengue fever from last book) are set on a collision course with modern Laos's first attempted counter-coup by Royalists based across the Mekong River in Thailand. Siri also solves the murder of a small boy, a troublemaking 1970s version of Siri himself I suspect, is betrayed, finds a long-lost revolutionary-era gal-pal of his and his wife's, is betrayed again, and suffers the pangs of later-life love. In the end, of course, the murder of the dentist, the murder of the small boy, and the pair of betrayals are interconnected by Cotterill's undeniable panache in plotting. And, well, love is in the August, 1977, air....

...but none of it is comin' from me. Anyone who has read my outraged screech of a review of The Brutal Telling by Lousy Louise Penny will remember how bitterly I responded to her ripping out my heart and shredding it into gobbets, then pouring boiling salted vinegar into the still-living cavity she left, with the character development that ends the book. I rated it -15,000*. I give Crummy Colin Cotterill 25 more stars because the ripping, shredding, and pouring were very slightly ameliorated by the in-book resolution to the main betrayal, and the sheer rightness of the second betrayal that ends so happily, and by the whimsical pleasure of the love affair for Dr. Siri.

Plus there's Auntie Bpoo, the transvestite shaman who works the riverside in front of the Aeroflot office, of whom I devoutly hope to see more.

*gets out voodoo dolly in Cotterill's likeness to inflict severe tooth pain on him for forseeable future*


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DISCO FOR THE DEPARTED, 3rd Dr. Siri Laotian Mystery

DISCO FOR THE DEPARTED (Dr. Siri Paiboun #3)
COLIN COTTERILL
Soho Crime
$14.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The 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 assume power. Now, as a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk that had been laid from the President’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs. Dr. Siri is ordered to supervise the disinterment of the body attached to the arm, identify the corpse and discover how he died.

The autopsy provides some surprises but it is his gift as a shaman that enables the seventy-two-year old doctor to discover why the victim was buried alive and, eventually, the identity of his killer.

My Review: Comrade Doctor Siri, the only coroner in the newly “liberated” Communist regime of Laos, returns to the northeastern jungle caves where he and his Pathet Lao insurgent comrades once fought the Royalists and the Americans for control of Laos. His purpose: Find out, in the ten days before a celebratory concert takes place there, whose body has been discovered in the newly laid cement walkway leading to the president's former hideout. Formidable Nurse Dtui in tow, Dr. Siri uncovers a series of awful, painful truths about families, friends, and the departed but not gone spirits of those who (willingly or not) gave their lives for the cause of communism.

Along the way, Dr. Siri encounters an old Cuban friend from insurgency days, a host of disco-dancing spirits, a Lao cadre with the personality of a rock and the temerity to file a request for permission to woo before approaching Dtui to ask for her hand in marriage, becomes the living host of a different, dead Cuban, and unknowingly loses his eidetically gifted, Down's syndrome afflicted morgue assistant Mr. Geung, who contracts dengue fever (often fatal) in an epic walk across most of Laos to get back from his politically motivated exile from Vientiane's—indeed Laos's—only morgue at the hands of insufferable idiot politico Judge Haeng.

When triumphant Siri and Dtui host an official delegation from Vietnam, their delightful antics offer an ending to this entry in the long-running series that should, if you're at all a fan of the comedy of cosmic justice, have you chortling with appreciative schadenfreude for hours.

In any series, there comes a point when things either get stale or take some sort of turn that's got long-range implications and bends the course of future events. The latter point has been reached in this series, here in the third book, and there are some characters not present who would ordinarily be on-scene. Comrade Inspector Phosy is completely absent; Comrade Minister Civilai is only a token presence; but they will be back. Won't they? I haven't read the next book yet, so I can't be sure, but they should...and Dtui, bless her cotton socks, not only gets a marriage proposal (rejected) but other life-changing news (good) that will make the rest of the series look a little different.

Series mysteries appeal to me for these reasons, these ongoing characters having ongoing lives that change the way things transpire in the books. I am, I suppose, the soap-opera-watching sort of personality. I like getting to know the characters in my entertainments over time, and watching them develop as logically as fictional characters can. Which is often a great deal more logically than corporeal characters can, or at least do, develop. And of course there is the orderliness of bad people being punished for doing bad things aspect of mysteries that's very appealing. It happens so seldom in life.

Cotterill's Laos has the virtue of being completely unfamiliar to me, and therefore adding a (possibly spurious) sense of learning something about an alien life-way. I found the expanded knowledge of Laotian communitarian culture very interesting in this book. The moments that Mr. Geung, walking across most of his country, spends in the care of his countrymen are charming to me, revealing a place and a time that valued humanness and kindness over and above any -ism or credo. Cotterill is at pains to point out that the cities might already be changing, but the populace still valued and followed the ancient principles of hospitality and generosity to others.

A deeply involving series, an interesting entry in it, and a story that both wraps itself up sensibly and satisfyingly as well as sets up the changes and events of the next entry...what more can a mystery addict ask for?


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THIRTY-THREE TEETH, 2nd Dr. Siri Laotian Mystery

THIRTY-THREE TEETH (Dr. Siri Paiboun #2)

COLIN COTTERILL

Soho Crime

$9.99 ebook platforms, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Feisty Dr. Siri Paiboun is no respecter of persons or Party; at his age he feels he can afford to be independent. In this, the second novel in the series, he travels to Luang Prabang where he communes with the deposed king who is resigned to his fate: it was predicted long ago. And he attends a conference of shamans called by the Communist Party to deliver an ultimatum to the spirits: obey Party orders or get out. But as a series of mutilated corpses arrives in Dr. Siri’s morgue, and Nurse Dtui is menaced, he must use all his powers—forensic and shamanic—to discover the creature—animal or spirit—that has been slaying the innocent.

My Review: Returning to Vientiane, Laos, a good three months after we left it in The Coroner's Lunch, Colin Cotterill drops us in the midst of Laotian Hell: It's the hot season, before the rains, and so the entire nation greets each other with, "Hot, isn't it?" Responding, "Damned hot."

I felt that horrible, stifling, miserable heat the entire time I was engrossed in the two mysteries Dr. Siri Paiboun, Laos's only coroner, sets out to solve. The first is a truly terrifying series of maulings, which are blamed on a Malay black bear recently escaped from terrible, cruel captivity at a local luxury hotel's menagerie. Dr. Siri sees the first victim in his morgue, determines there's no human agency in the death, and goes home...there to awake with a black bear breathing on him! He suspects his last earthly moments have come, but the bear merely shambles off after communing with him for a time. More maulings are reported over the course of the book, but the bear herself is not found despite an intensive manhunt.

The next layer of mystery announces itself with a strange death at the Ministry of Sport and Culture. An official charged with overseeing the Ministry's archive is found dead at the base of the fountain in the square the Ministry's on, clearly having been precipitated from the roof. The archive is locked, the only key is on the inside of the door, and the official can't possibly have thrown himself that far from the building. Siri breaks into the archive with his pal Inspector Phosy, last seen as a covert cop, and now a Vientiane police inspector. They discover a chest with the Royal seal intact on it, and can't bring themselves to open it because of its evil aura. Siri warns Phosy and his fellow officers to stay away, he will find a way to get into the chest using his newly discovered connections to the Other World; reluctantly they agree; Siri must now figure out what to do, since he has not Clue One how to manage evil spirits.

And here is where Cotterill takes this tale from a very good 3.5 to near 4 stars, over the bar, and into the four-star world. Siri is summoned to Luang Prabang, Laos's ancient Royal capital, to look into the deaths of two men whose identities the Communist authorities are eager to discover for reasons they won't go into. Siri meets the spirits of the men, uncovers a vicious and wicked betrayal, and brings the malefactor to Justice, instead of legal justice. In the process, Cotterill introduces Siri and the reader to the Laotian kingdom's central spirit repository, and reveals the unhappy reason for an unhappy nation's descent from quiet prideful independence into ever-increasing want and lack. The scene of the reveal is so moving and so affecting that I was compelled to read it twice.

Far from leaving his readers there, though, the author then proceeds to tie in and tie up the maulings with Siri's morgue nurse, Dtui, earning her detective stripes (literally) by her determined and courageous pursuit of a solution to the mysterious animal's whereabouts, taking her from Comrade Minister Civilai's world of the Politburo (where the old codger is the Voice of Reason, an exhausting and thankless task, making him miss his youth spent in the jungles as a freedom fighting boon companion to Siri), to the hidden world of the prisons Laos isn't supposed to need anymore in the Socialist Paradise, and finally to the ragged edge of her own life at the mercy of the evil forces causing the mutilation killings. Siri and his boon companions wind all the loose ends into a very, very happy ending, though just as in real life, there are prices to be paid for all happiness...but on balance, the good outweighs the painful and unhappy.

Like we wish it would in Real Life.

Oh my heck. I just can't get over several scenes in this book, the one I won't spoiler that I mentioned above, but also some character scenes that I was moved by. One involves Comrade Coroner Siri, Comrade Minister Civilai, and Comrade Inspector Phosy having lunch by the river, something that childless Siri and Civilai have done together often, but now include the unmarried, middle-aged Phosy in. The scene comes at a very interesting point, where Siri has just confirmed that he (like Buddha) has thirty-three teeth which marks him out as a being who is a bridge between the Other Realms and the mundane world we all live in. It feels like the reader is the quiet fourth person watching a pair of old uncles chaffing and loving their younger, respectful nephew, all with the quietest and most enjoyable teasing sweetness. I was very pleased and honored to be allowed into their moment of closeness, and then remembered that the author was creating this scene, not recording or reporting it.

And then there came a moving scene between Siri and Nurse Dtui, which I can't talk about for fear of spoilering events. I hate that I can't talk about it, but to anyone who has felt the ghastly sense of anti-climax when reading a spoilered ending, I need not explain my hesitation. Suffice it to say, Nurse Dtui is more of a daughter to Siri than even he knows yet.

Four full and happily given stars, plus a quarter star to grow on. This is a series my mystery fanboy heart has embraced for good.

THE CORONER'S LUNCH, Dr. Siri Laotian Mystery #1

THE CORONER'S LUNCH (Dr. Siri Paiboun #1)
Colin Cotterill
Soho Crime
$14.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 3.875* of five

The Publisher Says: Laos, 1975. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Dr. Siri Paiboun, a 72-year-old Paris-trained doctor, is appointed national coroner. Although he has no training for the job, there is no one else; the rest of the educated class has fled.

He is expected to come up with the answers the party wants. But crafty and charming Dr. Siri is immune to bureaucratic pressure. At his age, he reasons, what can they do to him? And he knows he cannot fail the dead who come into his care without risk of incurring their boundless displeasure. Eternity could be a long time to have the spirits mad at you.

My Review: In the Vientiane, Laos, of November 1976, green-eyed Dr. Siri Paiboun is the seventy-two-year-old coroner...the only one in the newly liberated by communism country...charged with discovering why Mrs. Nitnoy, powerful leader of the Laos Women's Union and wife of Member of Parliament Kham, suddenly keeled over dead. Her husband insists it was her peasant taste for raw pork. The judge Dr. Siri works for thinks that sounds reasonable, and also unnecessary to investigate.

Dr. Siri knows otherwise. Not because he's that good a coroner, since he's only had the job for ten reluctant months...he knows because Mrs. Nitnoy told him so.

After she was dead.

So begins a fascinating look into the chaotic world of Southeast Asia in the wake of the Vietnam War, told from the out-of-the-Anglophone-ordinary viewpoint of the Southeast Asians left to pick up the pieces. The story follows Dr. Siri as he is manipulated from behind the scenes in someone's quest to hide truths from the doctor, someone who clearly doesn't know...heck, even the good doctor doesn't know!...that Dr. Siri is the latest incarnation of legendary thousand-plus-year-old shaman Yeh Ming, and so has the ability to see spirits and call on ancient energies intrinsic to Laos's beautiful forested mountains.

Dr. Siri is called upon to use his increasing skills as a coroner to look into the deaths of three Vietnamese nationals, in Laos for purposes both secret and unknown to anyone Siri knows; then is sent to the ethnically Hmong south to deal with the sudden and unexpected deaths of Army officers in charge of an economic revitalization program that doesn't seem to be revitalizing so much as devitalizing the men in charge; and while among the Hmong, who worryingly seem to know him better than he knows himself, Siri finally gets to know Yeh Ming, his fellow traveler in this green-eyed body in a country of brown-eyed people.

With a combination of mundane detective skills, spirit guidance, and help from a formidable nurse, an eidetic Down's syndrome laborer, an old friend in high places, and a new friend in clandestine ones, Siri ties all the malefactors in knots and delivers them to the proper authorities (whether spiritual or mundane) with ribbons on.

This book is such a welcome addition to my series-mystery-loving world. Dr. Siri is a delight. He's too old, and too weary, and too smart to be scared by petty bureaucratic thuggery. He values his comfort...oh yeah baby, the older we get, the more we do!...but his idea of comfort includes doing the real right thing, not the easy right thing.

Cotterill gives Dr. Siri a deep and rich backstory reaching into Laos's colonial French past, extending into the jungles of Pathet Lao communist resistance, and through to the time of victory and the inevitable Animal Farm-esque disillusion that accompanies regime change. "Throw the crooks out!" the cry goes up, but the unsaid and often unrealized second part of that cry is, "and let our crooks have a turn!" Dr. Siri sees this, knows it, and frankly doesn't care. He's got no children, so no grandchildren, and so no, or a very small, stake in this Brave New World. Except, well, you know, there IS justice in the world, imperfect and piecemeal though it may be, but justice demands a good man's best be given and a heavy price be paid both for administering and evading it.

He might only have one (metaphorical) eye, but Siri is honor bound to use it among the blind he lives with. It's this quality that makes him irresistible, and gives Cotterill's creation a semblance of life that brings him out of the pages of the book and into the imagination of the reader who lives in a world where ideals of fairness and decency and selflessness have degenerated into "don't tread on me" selfishness and mock-"liberty" that curiously resembles "don't tell me what I can do with what's mine" greed. It's these very things that Siri grimaces at.

Just like me.


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New Review Extra for 19 April 2013: KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT (Jimm Juree #1)

KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT (Jimm Juree #1)
COLIN COTTERILL
Minotaur Books
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A former crime reporter stuck in rural Thailand discovers a grizzly cold case in this "ebullient series kickoff" by the author of The Coroner's Lunch (Kirkus).

A former crime reporter with the Chiang Mai Daily Mail, Jimm Juree has moved with her eccentric family to a small fishing village on the Gulf of Siam. Stuck in this provincial backwater, she's convinced her days as a journalist are over—until a local palm oil farmer uncovers a long-buried Volkswagen on his property.

Two human skeletons, one wearing a hat, are found inside the van. Jimm is thrilled. Then a Buddhist monk is murdered at a nearby temple, and she finds herself facing a baffling and dangerous mystery. There are no suspects and no apparent motive—but plenty of odd connections to other brutal killings.

Suddenly, Jimm's new life is somewhat more promising and a lot more deadly. To unravel these inexplicable events, she'll need all of her skills, a lot of luck, and the help of her entire family.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

My Review: Jimm Juree, female crime reporter/editrix in waiting, leaves heavily urban and crime-ridden Chiang Mai, Thailand (ideal for her chosen trade, eh?), when her scatty, pre-dementia-sufferer mother (called "Mair" which means Mama throughout the book) decides to sell the family home and family shop and buy a ghastly little hole-in-the-wall "resort" in Thailand's Deep South...with all the freight that phrase implies in English fully intact here. With Mair and Jimm go Arny, the youngest of the family, a cliff of muscle and a mass of insecurities, as well as Granddad Jah, father of Mair and forty-year veteran of the Thai police whose inability to take bribes stalled his career at the level of Corporal.

Gettin' the set-up here? Mass of misfits go to be, collectively, fish out of water on the hot, humid Gulf of Siam coast. And what happens? As soon as the family gets there, Jimm gets involved in a weird discovery: Two skeletons in an ancient VW Kombi discovered at the bottom of a well-pit. What gives? We follow Jimm as she makes friends (sort of) with the local constabulary in pursuit of information on the who, what, when, how, and why of this utterly strange killing...murder...accidental death...suicide...? Who knows? But the editor Jimm so wanted to replace as soon as he dies buys the story.

Yay, right? Well...then comes a grisly horrible scary murder of an abbot sent from Buddhist HQ to investigate the possible salacious goins-on of the local abbot and his resident nun. Turns out they knew each other well in former lives...and someone is sure they're doin' the nasty even now, many many years later. When the HQ abbot turns up hideously slain, there is a curious radio silence...no news leaks...but Jimm, being steps away from the crime scene, hears all and sees much. She, with help from flaming queen Lieutenant Chompu, Granddad Jah, and a selection of interviewees at varying levels of helpfulness and relevance, puts all the pieces together. The guilty are, well, guilty, and known to be so; the ending is a bit of a let-down on some points. But end it does, and no one can not know justice is meant to be served.
This book and I have A History. The first copy I got was *shudder* bug-infested *shudder*, and was summarily heaved into the trash for the crime. Then a dear and warm-hearted fellow reader took pity on me and sent me her copy of the ARC. Now how kind is that? And when does the book arrive? Just as I'm beginning a nasty nasty bout of flu. So was I willing to cut the beginning of the book, which contains some unpleasant slights to the transgendered community, any slack? Why no! I was not! And then we are treated to some snark, a little sarcasm, and heaps of condescenscion. Oh, my, were we on the way to a flame-fest! I had my own vituperative darts and righteous flaming arrows all lined up, I did. I was even ready to give up and just not review it, since I hate to be nasty to authors who have spent blood, sweat, and tears on creating something to amuse thee and me. Seems churlish somehow.

Then came p349. I won't tell you what happens there. Suffice to know that the whole reason I was reading the book, ill temper and all, snapped into focus for me. I was left a little hollow by that stuffing-knocking-out. I was so very glad I'd kept going. It made a lot of things that ticked me off fall into perspective. It could for you, too...but, in the end, it's the characters that will make or break this book for readers, not necessarily the mystery. In this way, the book merits comparison to Mma Ramotswe's adventures retailed by Alexander McCall Smith. The setting of rural Thailand is certainly fresh and new to my jaded American eyes!

So. To recommend or not to recommend? I choose recommend, with one strong caveat: Open up *first* or the experience of change might slip past you. I'd hate to know that was the case.