The Coroner's Lunch: A Dr Siri Murder Mystery - Tapa dura

.witty novel sharply captures the confusion after the revolution, and the hero, at turns cynical and humane, is an absolute diamond - Daily Telegraph (Daily Telegraph)

Cotterill's depiction of this exotic, troubled country is fascinating, and his light touch makes Siri, with his humanity and strange dreams, very appealing - Guardian (Guardian)

This series kickoff is an embarrassment of riches: Holmesian sleuthing, political satire and droll comic study of a prickly late bloomer - Kirkus Reviews (Kirkus)

Cotterill has a wonderful sense of farce...a delightful book - Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney Morning Herald)

Siri has a wry sense of humour and a beady eye for the farcical...The combination of humour, local colour, sympathetic characters and a cracking good detective story is a winning one - Irish Examiner (Irish Examiner)

The story is good, the characters interesting, the hero delightful and the setting fascinating: a find - The Literary Review (Literary Review)

In Laos in the year 1976, the monarchy has been deposed, and the Communist Pathet Lao have taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor remains. And so this 72-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite having no training, equipment, experience or even inclination for the job. But the job's not that bad and Siri quickly settles into a routine of studying outdated medical texts, scrounging scarce supplies, and circumnavigating bureaucratic red tape to arrive at justice. The fact that the recently departed are prone to pay Siri the odd, unwanted nocturnal visit turns out to be an added bonus in his new line of work. But when the wife of a party leader turns up dead and the bodies of tortured Vietnamese soldiers start bobbing to the surface of a Laotian lake, all eyes turn to Siri. Faced with official cover-ups and an emerging international crisis, the doctor enlists old friends, village shamans, forest spirits, dream visits from the dead - and even the occasional bit of medical deduction - to solve the crimes.