Laos - Part 1

Colin Cotterill, a British expat based in Thailand, is the author of a mystery series that centers on Dr. Siri Paiboun, the seventy-two-year-old People’s Democratic Republic of Laos reluctant and unqualified one and only coroner. While the first book in the series (The Coroner’s Lunch) appeared in 2004, the time of the action is the 1970’s. Dr. Siri, with a friend in the politburo as old as himself, a cast of well-intentioned misfits, and a lot of ingenuity, sets to unravel the mysteries that the dead bring to him. It helps that he is directly in touch with the spirit world.

While in the Si Phan Don (also known as four thousand islands, an area of the Mekong on the southernmost end of Laos), with temperatures soaring upwards of 100 and humidity nearing 80%, the body wanted shade, air conditioning, horizontality and a book. I read the first two of Dr. Siri’s adventures and what a lovely intro he is to a country that doesn’t seem to have changed much since 1976. Poor as a rat (he and the country), smart as a whip (that would be just him), and with a mordant sense of humor (ditto), Dr. Siri is a hero for the seventies and our times. Through him I’ve learned about the Lao relationship with communism and animism, about how much one can do with barely nothing, and about the heat. “Hot, isn’t it?” seems to replace hello as a salutation, and that from people used to it.

Mr. Cotterill, who just turned sixty, published his first book in 2000 and has recently finished the draft of book number twenty something (he’s so prolific, it’s hard to count). Imagine the output if he hadn’t waited. In Laos, besides accounts of a war the U.S. never waged but which nonetheless killed, maimed or displaced hundreds of thousands of Lao, when it comes to any other type of writing, Mr. Cotterill is all there is. Every country should be this lucky.

If you have a minute, check out his site, or his books, even if you never plan to get lost this way. FYI, I get no royalties for the plug. Just glad to have ‘discovered’ a good one.