Don't eat me

Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Zany isn't the first word that springs to mind when you think of murder mysteries, but CWA Dagger in the Library winner Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboun, the former national coroner of Laos, set mainly in Laos but also in Thailand and at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, expands the boundaries of mystery fiction into a heady brew of Communist-oppressive noir and magical realism. Regarding the latter, Siri is haunted and annoyed by a series of spirits, a fact that is expressed in a deliciously deadpan manner. In this thirteenth in the series, the action opens with Siri and a buddy returning from Thailand by boat with a movie camera used to shoot The Deer Hunter. They intend to film, without knowing how to operate the camera, a Laotian version of War and Peace. Meanwhile, a young woman's skeleton has been discovered in the middle of the town square; what bothers the investigators and Siri, as he becomes drawn into the case is the strong suggestion that the flesh was physically eaten away. Watching Siri and his indomitable wife, Madame Daeng (who runs the best noodle shop in Vientiane), fight bureaucrats with guile is wonderful in itself. Add to that a plot that keeps deepening, riotously comic schemes and encounters, and the vividly realized atmosphere of life in late '70s and early '80s People's Democratic Republic of Laos, and you have something remarkably deep and, yes, quite zany.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Cotterill's excellent 13th mystery, set sometime after 1980 in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos (after 2017's The Rat Catcher's Olympics), Dr. Siri Pauboun, the country's national coroner, and his friend Chief Insp. Phosy Vongvichai, who's a rare honest cop, have a grisly murder to solve. A night patrol has found a skeleton at the base of the Anusawari Victory Arch belonging to a woman who was apparently eaten by animals, possibly while she was still alive. The sensitive inquiry implicates a powerful official, placing Phosy's career and life at risk. The crime may also be connected with illegal animal trafficking. A subplot involving Siri's plans to produce a film based on War and Peace-and his navigating of the bureaucracy to get the project green-lit-provides comic relief from what would otherwise be a grim tale. Wry prose ("Life sped by in Vientiane like a Volkswagen van on blocks") also lightens the mood. The eccentric Siri, who's possessed by spirits (including those of a dog, his dead mother, and a transvestite fortune-teller), continues to stand out as a unique and endearing series sleuth. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

The 13th entry in Cotterill's popular series (after The Rat Catcher's Olympics) sees Siri, the former national coroner of Laos, married and settled down and ready to make a film using a camera that he and his longtime friend -Civilai have smuggled across the Mekong River. But when a woman's skeleton is found, Dr. Siri must marshal his group of dedicated friends, plus the loyal customers of Madame Daeng's noodle house, to identify the murderers. In the process, more killings are discovered-not human ones, but those of wild animals taken under cruel conditions to other countries for zoos and medicinal uses. Into this complicated mix comes the slow realization that Judge Haeng may be in some way involved. Cotterill uses subtle humor and historical fact to write a compelling mystery in which marginalized people (the elderly, the mentally challenged, etc.) are integral characters. VERDICT Fans of -Alexander McCall Smith and Boris Akunin will enjoy this gently ironic series. Definitely recommended for its inclusive characters, humor, and a thought-provoking ending. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]-Susanne Lohkamp, Multnomah Cty. Lib., Portland, OR © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A mysterious skeleton, a controversial film project, local government corruptionwho else could solve this puzzle but curmudgeonly coroner Dr. Siri?Fresh from his misadventures at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow (The Rat Catchers Olympics, 2017, etc.), elderly instigator Dr. Siri Paiboun has an ambitious new project: an epic film based on Tolstoy's War and Peace. He's even managed to sneak a $15,000 camera back into repressive Laos. Chief Inspector Phosy of the Vientiane police thinks Siri has been smuggling in weapons but must proceed delicately, both because he's only recently been promoted and because his wife, the acerbic and domineering Nurse Dtui, was Dr. Siri's assistant during his tenure as the country's coroner. Phosy instead confronts Siri's pampered, high-maintenance wife, Madam Daeng, at her noodle shop. Dtui now works as a nursing instructor, but her experience and expertise are needed when a female skeleton is discovered at the base of the Anusawari Victory Arch, an event foreshadowed in the creepy opening chapter. Siri's film project is sidelined while he assembles his "group of crime fighters" to unravel the mystery. Their probe takes them by turns to the airport, a nest of animal oppressors, and the chambers of a corrupt judge. Meantime, the film project crawls drolly along.Cotterill's long-running series, now on its 13th installment, runs on the chemistry of his quirky comic characters, who once again deliver delightfully. Tart chapter titles like "Enough Perverts to Keep Us All Busy" add another layer of ironic humor. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One Nineteen Eyes   This whole thing started and finished with her. She was in a crate. A compact coconut wood coffin with narrow slits for air. She'd screamed over and over to no avail. She'd tried to make sense of it. She'd counted the unblinking eyes. Nineteen of them. One eye too many or one too few, but nineteen by every reckoning. And even though there was no light beneath the thick tarpaulin those eyes glowed deep yellow like dying stars.       When she came around that last time she thought she was still in the nightmare and in a way she was. Her knees were tucked up tightly against her chest and there was no more than a shoebox of space at the foot of the crate, but the creatures--the nineteen-eyed creatures--had contracted somehow and packed themselves together so closely there would be no contact with her. Not yet. She could feel their hot breaths against her bare toes. She could hear the wheezing in their throats. But they stared at her, unmoving, waiting for her to lose consciousness again because it was inevitable she would. They would bide their time until she had no more fight in her. Then, and only then, they would devour her.       Chapter Two The Smugglers   Life sped by in Vientiane like a Volkswagen van on blocks. The streets were crusty with red dust, the uneven sidewalks sprouted half-hearted weeds, and the people neither smiled nor raised their voices for fear of drawing attention to themselves. You could never be sure who was listening. They all knew of someone who'd fled the country and at least one person who'd disappeared. Many had relatives in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border. Many more had ambitions or dreams or plans to join them but lacked the spunk.       This was year five of a socialist experiment that had failed the People's Democratic Republic of Laos in many ways. The Communist vessel was holed and on its way down. The rice collectives program had collapsed. Government workers went unpaid for months. And Thailand had once more closed its Mekhong border due to pissy spats over trespassing and accusations of insurgencies, and, never forget, good old historical animosity. The river guard patrols on both banks had been doubled, but it was a vast river and still the midnight rafts of smuggled Thai goods floated diagonally north on the current, crisscrossing disgruntled Lao heading south on their rubber inner tubes.       So it was a surprise to many on one humid night in August when two elderly Lao gentlemen were spotted paddling their bamboo raft in a northerly direction toward the country everyone wanted to leave. They were dressed in ninja black, but their grumbling and coughing destroyed any pretense of stealth. Between them was a balding cross-eyed hound and a mysterious large object wrapped in a nylon parachute. The latter was roughly the size and shape of a grenade launcher and would certainly have led to the old boys' being shot on sight if they were discovered. Smuggling weapons of war was not a wise pastime for men in their seventies.       "Did they not teach you to row?" asked Dr. Siri, the stockier of the two.       "I was a politician," Comrade Civilai replied. "They only taught us how to bail."       "Then that explains why we're going around in circles," said Siri.       The river ran high and fast at the end of the rains, and the current would have taken them far beyond Vientiane if they didn't lean into it with some enthusiasm. But paddling always appeared easier than it was, especially with a heavy cargo. From somewhere to the north they heard the crack of a river guard's rifle but no accompanying scream. Neither the rifles nor the men who bore them had any accuracy. The old boys were not intimidated by the sound because they knew how little chance there was of being hit.       "And going around in circles would aptly describe the direction of our policies these past five years," said Civilai, mostly to himself.       "Save your breath for a final push," said Siri. "There's our signal. We don't want to overshoot."      From the dense foliage ahead, two lights--one white, one red--flashed intermittently.        "My heart can't take this," said Comrade Civilai.       "Then rest your organs and put your back into it."       All at once they seemed to be surfing the current rather than fighting it. They gathered speed, charging toward the lights. Remarkably, they had timed their trajectory perfectly but not their velocity. Theirs was not a dignified landing. Ugly the dog, sensing danger, abandoned the vessel five meters from the bank and swam home. The corner of the raft snagged in a tree root so the vessel spun around and hit the bank at speed and in reverse. Dr. Siri was thrown to the deck. There was a loud thump when his head hit the bamboo, but his was a hard head. Civilai wasn't so lucky. He was jettisoned head first into the river mud where he sank immediately until only his legs were visible. To his credit he did not kick or wave them pathetically. They merely jutted heavenward like a victory sign. He was rescued by the reception committee. Mr. Geung and Madam Daeng took a leg each and yanked him out of the mire. He emerged with a slurping sound like a large snail being pulled reluctantly from its shell.       "Well that all worked out quite well," said Siri.     The next day, Chief Inspector Phosy arrived at Madam Daeng's noodle shop shortly after the morning rush. There were never enough stools to accommodate all the customers who traveled out of their way to eat the best homemade feu noodles in the country. Madam Daeng, never satisfied with shop-bought noodles, had taken to making her own beneath a corrugated tin roof behind the shop. Yet despite all the personal touches and time and effort the woman put into her dishes, and in the face of much criticism from her husband, she refused to increase the prices.       "The poor . . ." she would say, ". . . have as much right to eat food of quality as do the more advantaged."      Even the drivers of the black Zil limousines used by the senior Party members had to wait their turn to be served. Their bosses thought they might add a few extra kip as an incentive to jump the queue, but Madam Daeng would have nothing of it. Comrade Civilai often said that hers was the only example of functioning Communism in the republic. She replied that there was nothing political about it. She was just being fair.       "Is he in?" the chief inspector asked.      Madam Daeng saw a familiar scowl on his good-looking face. Since his promotion to chief inspector two months earlier, Phosy had discovered a lot to scowl about. Many members of the central committee considered him too young at forty-six to have been handed such responsibility. But Madam Daeng, twenty years his senior, knew there was nobody more qualified or able to take on the role. She left Mr. Geung to clean the noodle tubs and walked slowly over to the policeman.       "I'm very well, thank you, Chief Inspector," she said. "And you?"      Madam Daeng had been a freedom fighter in the clandestine war against the French imperialists, and she was well aware that she still intimidated even the most confident of men. In fact, her short shock of snow white hair and her piercing hazelnut-colored eyes gave her even more of an advantage. Phosy stood no chance.       "I'm sorry, Daeng," he said. "It just seems that your husband is intent on making my impossible job even more impossible."       "My goodness, what's he done now?" asked Daeng.       She poured the policeman a glass of iced tea and they sat at a table overlooking the river.       He sighed. "You know very well," he said.       "What kind of policeman would assume a wife knew every move her husband made?"       "One who knew she was an accomplice in a criminal act?"       They drank their sweet tea and watched Ugly the dog at the river's edge catching crabs.       "I'm offended," she said.       "You need to work on that inscrutability, Daeng. Not convincing at all."       "And what particular crime am I accused of accomplicing?"       "We'll start with smuggling."       "Oh, Phosy. Smuggling? Really? Twenty years ago that would have been called foraging. Nothing to eat in the village so you head off into the jungle and return with enough game to feed the family. Laos is being slowly starved to death by the Thai embargos, so it's only natural her inhabitants would forage."       "Foraging across a national border is called smuggling," said Phosy. "And if Siri had merely been paddling back from Si Chiang Mai with beans and roast pig I wouldn't be here."       "Then why are you here?"       "We have an eye-witness account of Dr. Siri and Comrade Civilai importing weapons."      She chuckled. "And what witness would that eye belong to?" she asked.       "I'm not at liberty to say."       "Of course you are. Until they get around to finishing the constitution we won't have any laws to speak of. Your liberty to say is arbitrary."      Phosy sipped his tea and followed the progress of a cloud. "A river guard," he said at last.       "A river guard saw Dr. Siri importing weapons?"       "Yes."       "Then why didn't he shoot him?"       "What?"       "Why didn't the river guard shoot Dr. Siri and his accomplices and be done with it?"       "It's delicate."       "Would it be because the river guards have splendid weapons produced in the Soviet Union but that for the past three months, due to some blip in the paperwork, none of them has been issued with ammunition? That in the event of seeing a suspicious craft on the river, our guards have been instructed to set dry bamboo tubes alight because that explosion makes a similar sound to the firing of a rifle and it may just discourage smugglers? The guards do however have marvelous flashlights and permission to shine the beam on suspicious objects. None so far has been silly enough to do such a thing. Thai smugglers are invariably armed and it would be suicidal. Therefore, no river guard on a cloudy night would have the faintest idea that Dr. Siri--if he even were to be on the river--might or might not be smuggling."      Phosy put down his glass. "He recognized all of you," he said. "He even identified the dog. He was in a tree not far from your reception committee. He's a regular customer here."       "Then he should be ashamed of himself," said Daeng. "What's become of loyalty to one's noodle shop?"       "Daeng . . ."       "We often go for a little paddle and a frolic of a night when it's too hot to sleep. Mistaken identity, no doubt. I'll have a word with him. What's his name?"       "Daeng."       "Yes?"       "What was on the raft?"       "There. That's the first thing the old Inspector Phosy would have asked. This new chief inspector's already tangled up in words."       "And if I had asked that question sooner I wouldn't have learned what classified information you have regarding our river guards, would I?"       "Damn, you got me."       "So?"       "So what?"       "So, what was on the raft?" Excerpted from Don't Eat Me by Colin Cotterill All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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