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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781569474648
ISBN number: 1569474648
Label: Soho Crime
Manufacturer: Soho Crime
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 248
Printing Date: August 01, 2007
Publishing house: Soho Crime
Sale Popularity Level: 51106
Studio: Soho Crime
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“Purely entertaining. . . . Elements of the ritualistic killings are pretty gross and the spooks can be scary; but as the author gently points out, life would be dreary without a few thrills.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Cotterill’s writing is both evocative and educational.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Readers who enjoy Eliot Pattison’s Asian thrillers . . . will find that Cotterill shares the same sardonic view of Asian communism mixed with a touch of mysticism . . . a quality that sets the work of both authors apart from most mystery fare.”—Library Journal (starred review)
Dr. Siri Paiboun is summoned to the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current communist government hid in caves, waiting to assume power. Now a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, but an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk laid from the president’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs. Siri must supervise the disinterment of the body attached to the arm, identify it, and determine the cause of death.
The autopsy provides some surprises, but it is his gifts as a shaman that enable the seventy-three-year-old doctor to discover why the victim was buried alive and identify the killer.
Colin Cotterill was born in London and currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He received the Dilys Award for Thirty-Three Teeth, the second mystery in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series.
For more information, visit www.colincotterill.com
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Rated by buyers 
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If you haven't been reading Colin Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboun you have been missing out. This is the third in the series, after The Coroner's Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth, about the national coroner of Laos (the only coroner in Laos) set shortly after the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam. This is a delicious reading experience: many-layered, good-humored, intelligent and just plain fun. Paiboun is an extremely likeable protagonist. He's a septugenarian, French-trained physician, multi-lingual curmudgeon who after being a life-long communist insurgent, finds himself appointed as national coroner despite having no training in the field, no texts, and no equipment. Tired, old, unhappy with the new job when he should be retired, and too irreverent and wise to be a good communist, Siri finds his life is actually turning out pretty swell when he discovers new friends in nurse Dtui, his formal assistant and Geung, his mentally-challenged informal assistant and new challenges in solving mysterious deaths. Complicating his life he also discovers that he is pretty good at being a coroner since he can see the spirits of the departed. This is nonplussing initially but as the series unfolds he discovers that he is host to the spirit of an ancient shaman, giving him some shaman powers in the spirit world. Unfortunately not all of the spirits are benign ones, and some are just plain out to get him.
This is quite a lot to make work successfully but Cotterill pulls it off beautifully. Siri, although an unusual fictional character, is one that you'll find sympathetic and deeply likeable as he wrestles with both convoluted mysteries and the party officials who are irked by them. His supporting characters are deeply likeable as well and the mysteries unfold against a backdrop in Southeast Asia that feels much more real than the normal American-experience Vietnam fare. This is the true Southeast Asian, seen from the viewpoint of an actual communist and Lao, and the story is deeply enriched by this immersion in an alternate point-of-view.
In this third novel Paiboun is called north to a re-education camp facility for former royalist officers to discover the identity of a corpse discovered in a shattered block of concrete. Struggling with the oil and water mix of communist bureacrats and native peasant beliefs, Siri discovers the corpse is a grey man, something of a rarity in Laos, and from there the story is a fun ride of Caribean Voodoo, Hmong magic, bureacratic discomfiture, and dancing ghosts who won't let Siri sleep at night, twined with a separate story of Geung's adventure while Siri and Dtui are away. Charming, likeable, and fun, if you like good-humored mysteries set in alternate milieus with engaging characters you'll love this series. I can't wait to get my hands on the fourth and fifth installments which are already released.
Rated by buyers -
My very first read in the Dr. Siri series, and I enjoyed it a great deal. The reality of mystery and what we would call the occult (and the Lao would not)are jarring at first, but persuasive by the end of the book.
Rated by buyers -
In this book, the third of four so far published to feature the septuagenarian national coroner of Laos, Dr Siri is called on to explain the mystery of a mummified arm inconveniently protruding from a concrete path in Huaphan Province. The mystery must be solved: the President is due back in a week and everything needs to be tidied up. Dr Siri is confident: `It doesn't take me that long to concede defeat.' It is 1977 and Dr Siri and Nurse Dtui are staying at Party Guesthouse Number One where food is scarce but bureaucratic process is rich.
In the meantime, back in Vientiane, Judge Haeng continues in his quest to have Mr Geung removed from his position in the morgue: `What image would foreign visitors take home if they came and saw a moron working for the State?' Mr Geung is removed, but Judge Haeng is sadly mistaken if he thinks he's won this particular skirmish with Dr Siri.
As is usual in these delightful stories, Dr Siri and his team have a number of problems to solve and questions to answer: what is Cuban grey magic doing in the mountains of Laos? Will Nurse Dtui succumb to the attractions of the handsome officer? Why do the spirits talk to Dr Siri, and what will happen to Mr Geung?
Now that I've read all four of the Dr Siri books published so far, I can sit back (until subsequent month) to wait for the fifth instalment. Dr Siri's dry humour, his ability to get the best outcomes from the creaking bureaucratic processes all make him an enjoyable albeit an unlikely hero.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Rated by buyers -
This was my second experience with Colin Cotterill's highly unusual Siri Paiboun detective series and I found it as enjoyable as my introduction in "Anarchy and Old Dogs." (I'm apparently reading in reverse chronological order, but it hasn't made a difference so far.) As noted by other reviewers, the main characters and setting for these stories are about as unusual as any being written and published in English. Who else writes about Laos in the postwar 1970s? But the author is entirely credible in presenting the exotic and very personable subjects as well as in his spinning of some very original plot lines.
"Disco for the Departed" employs humour and humanity throughout to propel the story and while there is some slightly suspect reliance on the mystical and supernatural to assist in the resolution of the book's mysteries, Cotterill's use of the devices is clever enough in this context to get away with it. The prose and character development are the strong points of this book and give the reader some very enjoyable moments. Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers 
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Collin Cotterill's mysteries are set in the 1970's in Laos, of all places. His mystery series features Dr. Siri an aged, wise coroner and his co-workers Geung and Nurse Dtui. This books mixes elements of the spirit worlds (but no so much as to make the books unbelievable) and real world. The plot is easy to follow and the characters well-developed.
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