Showing results by author "Colin Cotterill" in Suspense

Dr Siri Paiboun may be in his 73rd year, but he’s still as sturdy as a jungle boar – and as crafty as one. Reluctant coroner to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, he’s been despatched to the country’s mountainous north, where the sudden appearance of a mummified arm protruding from a concrete path laid in front of the president’s new mansion has caused an understandable degree of embarrassment.

When a blind, retired dentist is run down by a logging truck as he crosses the road to post a letter, Dr Siri Paiboun, official and only coroner of Laos, finds him faced with his most explosive case yet. The dentist’s mortal remains aren’t nearly as intriguing as the letter in his pocket. Written in invisible ink and encrypted, the letter presents Dr Siri with an irresistible challenge.

Laos, 1972. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but 72-year-old Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor, remains and is appointed state coroner. When three bodies are recovered from a reservoir, Dr.Siri establishes the cause of death was not drowning - they seem to have been electrocuted. And then there is the inexplicable death of a Party bigwig's wife at a banquet. Dr.Siri doesn't think her death was from natural causes.

Against all his expectations, Dr Siri Paiboun has rather enjoyed his first five months in office. Now, as hot-season nights close in, Siri is spirited away from Laos' steamy capital on a Matter of National Security. Arriving in Luang Prabang, he's a busy man, examining carbonized corpses, dining with the deposed king, attending a shamans' conference and being rescued by the ghost of an elephant. Not that Siri's complaining … Luang Prabang is in mountains and a good fifteen degrees cooler.

Laos, 1979: Dr. Siri Paiboun, the twice retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a handwoven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn in northern Laos. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining?

Laos, 1979: Retired coroner Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, have never been able to turn away a misfit. As a result they share their small Vientiane house with an assortment of homeless people, mendicants, and oddballs. One of these oddballs is Noo, a Buddhist monk who rides out on his bicycle one day and never comes back, leaving only a cryptic note in the refrigerator - a plea to help a fellow monk escape across the Mekong River to Thailand. Naturally, Siri can't turn down the adventure.