Description: 1975 Communism has taken over Laos, and Dr. Siri Paiboun, a seventy-two-year-old doctor, is appointed national coroner. He is expected to come up with the answers the party wants, but the clever, charming Dr. Siri is immune to bureaucratic pressure.
Brief description:
Colin Cotterill has won the Dilys Award and a Crime Writers of America Dagger and has been a finalist for several other awards. Born in London, he has worked as teacher in Israel, Australia, the United States, and Japan before he started training teachers in Thailand. He lives with his wife in a small fishing village on the Gulf of Siam in Southern Thailand.
Review Quotes:
"A wonderfully fresh and exotic mystery...If Cotterill...had done nothing more than treat us to Siri's views on the dramatic, even comic crises that mark periods of government upheaval, his debut mystery would still be fascinating. But the multiple cases spread out on Siri's examining table...are not cozy entertainments but substantial crimes that take us into the thick of political intrigue."
-- "New York Times Book Review"