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Mysteries of the East > Laos > Colin Cotterill

British-born, 1952-

The Dr Siri novels of Colin Cotterill

Title	Date originally published	eBook available?	In print?
The Coroner's Lunch	2004	Yes	Yes
Thirty-Three Teeth	2005	Yes	Yes
Disco for the Departed	2006	No	Yes
Anarchy and Old Dogs	2007	No	Yes
Curse of the Pogo Stick	2008	No	Yes
The Merry Misogynist	2009	No	Yes
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave	2010	No	Yes

Announcements

E-Reads publishes the digital Dr Siri by Michael Robert Broschat	6/9/2009 9:25 PM
The first two Dr Siri novels by Cotterill have been released in digital form via E-Reads. See http://www.ereads.com/2009/06/dr-siri-colin-cotterills-brilliant-and.html for this great news. Although I'm a Kindle owner and advocate, E-Reads releases...

Reviews of Dr Siri novels

Title

Review text

Review of The Coroner's Lunch

This is an utterly charming novel. I've tried to understand just why, and I think it has much to do with the fact that our lovable characters are stuck within a repressive regime. We like the underdog, and Dr Siri and his friends are very much underdogs.

The regime in question is Laotian, and Dr Siri and our stories take place during the late 1970s after the successful overthrow of the monarchy by the communist Pathet Lao. Dr Siri was right there fighting along with the boys and girls, working for truth, justice, and the Lao way. As most often happens, when the revolutionaries take power, they start dividing up the spoils among themselves, and the ordinary citizen is often worse off than before the revolution, if just for ideological reasons.

Dr Siri has been appointed coroner for the entire country. He's the only one, and he was a doctor before the appointment. Doesn't know anything about being a coroner. Oh, and he has no tools to work with. There's one textbook—in another language, but he does the best he can.

In this story, some odd situations concerning some recent dead bodies get him wondering whether everything is as simple as it seems and, fortunately for us, it isn't.

Dr Siri has two assistants who are considered expendable by the government. One is a young woman no one wants to marry, and the other is an idiot (Downs Syndrome) who might not be normal but is the only one who knows how to do most of the coroner practice. It's quite a team.

Even better, Dr Siri encounters a few good people along the way. They might not be in power, but they all believe in truth, justice, and the Lao way. There's even a good measure of the supernatural. We believe that Dr Siri is a reincarnation of an ancient sage, and the common people and righteous monks see this immediately.

Great fun, and a wonderful basis for a series. Long live Dr Siri...

—Michael Broschat, Sep 2008

Review of Thirty-Three Teeth

In Thirty Three Teeth, we learn that Dr Siri really is a god. Or spirit. Or host to same. I suppose we've always known it, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

And, really, it is that other worldly aspect to these stories that gives them their magic. I'm sure that not all readers can accept this quality of the stories, but if you're reading Asian mysteries, you're almost certainly a believer, anyway.

Dr Siri and his able assistants deal with the usual odd collection of corpses, one set of which show evidence of being killed by a savage animal. The rest, if I remember correctly, were killed by history—by the nature of the government of Laos during the later 1970s when these stories take place.

Those still alive include a great number of folks who believe in Laos and not the communist regime that has taken power. Once again, a stalwart group of citizens working for truth, justice, and the Lao way.

I bought this as an e-text from E-Reads, which so far has published the first two Dr Siri titles as e-text.

--Michael Broschat, August 2009

Review of Disco for the Departed

Disco for the Departed is the third book in the Dr Siri series by Colin Cotterill. The regular characters are well established, and each has a starring role in this story. Even the Mongoloid morgue assistant, with his limited abilities at comprehension, stars in a parallel story that proceeds along with the regular mystery, and it could be a book of its own.

Nurse Dtui comes into her own in this book. The second of two unlikely assistants to Dr Siri in Laos' only morgue (in the 1970s), this story gives her the chance to blossom and let her natural intelligence react to a whole set of new situations.

But the star is Dr Siri, the spirit-infested incarnation of a long-ago shaman whose own remarkable intelligence and dedication is often aided by whatever spirit is currently taking on his body for a brief reappearance in human life. Sounds pretty gruesome and science-fiction-like, but it's all just normal life in Laos (or Southeast Asia, one could argue).

The good doctor gets sent out to the homeland of the Pathet Lao, which rules Laos at the time of these stories. A mysterious death, of course, is the stimulus for the trip, and there is the usual number of conflicts with the new communist government, itself trying to figure out how to govern.

But in the end it's not what happens in a Dr Siri story that counts. It's how our characters react that gives us the great pleasure of reading these books. Meeting each situation with their essential goodness makes for the most pleasant of reading experiences. We hear of "feel-good" movies, but if there's an Oscar for feel-good books, I nominate this wonderful series.

--Michael Broschat, Nov 2009

Review of Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

Love Songs from a Shallow Grave was, at one time, to be the last Dr Siri novel. Not from a desire to stop writing them, but from a publisher's desire to stop publishing them. Evidently, the market for Laotian mysteries is small.

But I think there's been a reprieve, and Cotterill writes of working on another one.

I say this, because for several moments near the end, we hang in the balance as to whether there could even be another book (ignoring Reichenbach Falls, for the moment).

The author's message has to do with the Cambodian situation that existed through 1978 (the Killing Fields). But there's a very good mystery back home in Vientiane. Our hero, Dr Siri, refuses to accept the obvious and, of course, is proven correct in the end.

The book is very well structured. As we read about the mystery at home, we also read segments of the journal Dr Siri would have kept had he had use of his hands later on in the story. Enough said. In other words, the story progresses conventionally but intermixed with it is a document from the future. We understand that when we are in the story time that we are building up to the time described in the journal. Very effective.

The usual cast of characters populates much of the story. Dr Siri works in the morgue with a couple of social outcasts, and he has good relations with the good Laos, often in governmental positions. He is a good man, and his friends are good people, and they all need this, because this was not a very good time for Laos (or the neighborhood in which it finds itself).

And he's married! You're never too old, evidently, as Dr Siri celebrates in 74th birthday during the time frame of this story.

Here's hoping the coming decade doesn't slow him down...

--Michael Broschat, July 2010

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	Wikipedia biography

Colin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill

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