This is the second book in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series. It is set in the 1970s in Laos after the communists take over. The main character is a doctor and disillusioned party member. He is 72 and wants to retire, he did his time in the hills for 20 years and doesn't like how the party are treating people.

Unfortunately many educated people fled to Thailand when the communists took over, including the National Coroner. The party decides that Siri will take over the job. They don't care that he has no knowledge of taking people apart, or the coroner's specialties and techniques. In the communist party everyone is an interchangeable cog. The trials of Siri working out his job are detailed in the first book The Coroner's Lunch .

Siri is also a reluctant shaman who can see the spirits of the dead. They perform actions and he uses the information to help determine how and why they died. His powers increase with each book, but he has no training and no idea how to harness or use them.

He is given important or suspicious deaths to investigate. The spirits mean that those he works on are real people to him, and not just anonymous slabs of meat. He wants to find justice and dignity for the victims of crime.

In this book there are several threads. There is an animal in town killing people. Some think its the old bedraggled bear who escaped from a hotel 'zoo', others think it might be a tiger (due to bite marks), except no one can image it wandering the city and not being seen. The other option is a weretiger (the spirits switching form between tiger and human).

There is also a strange double death on a bicycle circling a fountain on a deserted street in the middle of the night. They think a man in the Sports Ministry took a flying leap from the top floor and landed on the man on the bicycle. There is a strange box in the upper room with dark and dangerous spirit vibes, and the seal of the Royal family.

Siri is then sent to the capital to determine the identity of two men burned to death. The party won't tell him the details, but he is able to work out broadly who they are and their connection to the deposed Royal Family who are being held there before being moved.

While Siri is away dealing with the deaths with the royal connections, his nurse and assistant Dtui is left with the search for the animal or spirit that is mauling people. She is poor, lacking political connections, female, big and not pretty. She is also very smart and Siri is trying to get her sent to school in the Soviet Union to receive coroner training. The party wants to send party members, and those with connections. In many ways this book is an exploration of Dtui's character, as well as that of Siri.

The people who work in the morgue are very important to Siri, not just Dtiu, but his technician who cleans and does menial work - Mr. Geung, and adult with Down's Syndrome. The judge in charge of them is filled with hate and revulsion towards Mr. Geung, and is always trying to replace him.

The books, although about death and murder are very warm hearted, funny and life affirming. There is also a good bit of cultural and spiritual information about Loas worked into the story. We also see Siri's battles with the party and how they are abusing their power and the common people. The writing is good, and I just love the series. ( )

The most original "detective" ever in Dr. Siri, a crotchety unwilling coroner in Laos. Love the way Cotterill combines a classic detection story with the "mystical" elements of Dr. Siri's gifts... ( )

#2 Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery, set in 1970’s Laos. Dr. Siri is the reluctant 72-year-old national coroner in post-Vietnam war Laos, as well as the current embodiment of an ancient Hmong shaman. Thus, he sees ghosts and hears spirits which help him in his mystery-solving. With his devil-may-care attitude, he is often bordering on running afoul of the new Communist regime in Laos, mostly because he would love nothing more than for his superiors to remove him from office and let him retire in peace. As with the last book, several mysteries and sub-plots join forces to make this a full and interesting book. Full of ‘woo woo’ (supernatural stuff) so if you don’t like that sort of thing, you may as well just stay away from this one. Except that Dr. Siri is such a delightful character I would recommend him to anyone! ( )

I enjoyed this immensely. It's the 2nd in a series and it's the first that really runs wild with the supernatural and mystical portions of Laotian culture and Dr. Siri's shamanistic abilities. The multiple storylines are still present as were in the first book, but there is still the focus on one particular case which indeed has a very interesting little twist. It's a clever work of misdirection that rivals anything the old Golden Age authors might have penned. While the denouement is not entirely surprising, the investigation of the gruesome killings of the women who appear to have been attacked by a crazed animal is right up there with some of the books of Dickson Carr, Queen, Abbot, Hake Talbot and other detective fiction writers who loved to combine the crime novel with the bizarre. When the finale came I was reminded of a terrible 1930s Crime Club novel long out of print (the name of which I will not reveal) that used a similar idea but handled it utterly ineptly. Cotterill's books are right up my alley. This work is far more action-oriented than the first a trend that will continue in the later books. It also has quite a bit of the genuinely supernatural (the royal puppets and the exorcism/cleansing Mr. Inthanet performs, for example). I know Cotterill gets criticized for being too Western in his writing for books about Southeast Asians and his black humor does not appeal to many readers. However, I would like to see more crime writers populating their books with these good humored, humane characters than the dour alcoholics and depressive figures I encounter most of the time in contemporary crime novels. ( )

The opening setting is Vientiane, People's Democratic Republic of Laos, in March 1977. A large Vietnamese delegation is staying at the Lan Xang Hotel. In the back garden of the hotel are some cages, one housing a mal-treated black mountain bear which escapes. The once retired and very reluctant national coroner, 72 year old Dr. Siri Paiboun, lives in a concrete mausoleum of a building in an outer suburb. On Monday morning when he arrives at the morgue for work Siri already has guests: two men found dead on a bicycle in the middle of the street.

Conditions in the morgue are primitive, and not airconditioned. Siri is assisted in his autopsies by the very observant Nurse Dtui and Mr. Geung, a downs syndrome man with an incredible memory. Siri brings to the mix "mystic connections", dreams, intuition, and visitations from the dead. Sometimes Siri has a problem in telling the dreams from reality, particularly after he's had a vodka drinking session with his good friend Comrade Civilai.

No sooner have they solved the puzzle of the dead men on the bicycle, than the rather odd team is presented with the body of old Auntie See, discovered in the bushes near her shanty, mauled to death. Almost simultaneously Siri is told his presence is required at the royal capital of Luang Prabang. He is required to discover where two rather carbonised corpses have come from. Such are the duties of Laos' national coroner.

One of the things I enjoyed about this book is Cotterill's underlying humour. There are also glimpses of forensic pathology far removed from the world of Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs. For those of us whose countries fought in the Vietnam War, this is also a look at the post-war world of Laos.

Cotterill's writing style is very laconic. Reminds me a bit of William Mcinnes although of course the latter isn't writing crime fiction. It also earlier reminded me a lot of Alexander Mccall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, and although the setting is very different, and in many ways, more third world, the connection is still there for me. Politically it gives a picture in which the revolutionary government is being tolerated by its citizens, but there is no doubt, that despite physical enforcement, the Laotian government remains in power only because the people tolerate it.

This novel, #2 in Cotterill's Siri Paiboun series, won't be everybody's cup of tea, and there was nearly too much of the "mystic" connections for me. But then this is a reminder that in some cultures the spiritual world exists in parallel with the physical, and so we must accept that in Dr. Siri's elderly body resides a very ancient spirit. If this were medieval England we would have no difficulty in accepting a belief in the influence of the spirits of good and evil on our daily lives.

So what has 33 teeth? Sorry- you'll have to read the book to find out.

Colin Cotterill trained as a physical education teacher and, now an Australian citizen, has lived and worked in Israel, Australia, USA, Japan, Thailand and Laos. He presently lives in Chiang Mai. His entertaining website tells you a lot about him, his books, and his Books for Laos project.

Titles to look for in the Dr. Siri series
THE CORONER'S LUNCH (2004)
THIRTY THREE TEETH (2005)
DISCO FOR THE DEPARTED (2006)
ANARCHY & OLD DOGS (2007) ( )