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by Colin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill World Literature English

ISBN 0676978347
ISBN13 978-0676978346
Language English
Author Colin Cotterill
Publisher Vintage Canada (August 7, 2007)
Pages 256
Formats azw mobi doc lrf
Category Fiction
Subcategory World Literature
Size ePub 1797 kb
Size Fb2 1229 kb
Rating: 4.4
Votes: 720

Dr. Siri Paiboun, reluctant national coroner of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, is summoned to a remote location in the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current government had hidden out in caves, waiting to assume power. Now, as a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk that had been laid from the President’s former cave hideout to his new house beneath the cliffs. Dr. Siri is ordered to supervise the disinterment of the body attached to the arm, identify the corpse and discover how he died. The autopsy provides some surprises but it is his gift as a shaman that enables the seventy-two-year old doctor to discover why the victim was buried alive and, eventually, the identity of his killer.From the Hardcover edition.

Until then, he’d always thought the contact he’d had with departed souls in his dreams was some kind of mental illness.

Disco for the Departed Colin Cotterill Guesthouse Number One Dr. Siri lay beneath the grimy mesh of the mosquito net, watching the lizard’s third attempt. Twice, the small gray creature had scurried up the wall and ventured out across the ceiling. On both occasions, the unthinkable had happened. Until then, he’d always thought the contact he’d had with departed souls in his dreams was some kind of mental illness. All that had changed the previous year.

Disco for the departed, Colin Cotterill. p. cm. ISBN-10: 1-56947-428-1.

Disco for the Departed. Guesthouse was hardly an appropriate name for the two-story building designed by Vietnamese rectangulists a few years earlier. Guesthouse Number One. Dr. It looked nothing like a house, and its inmates were certainly not guests. It was mostly inhabited by those who had sinned, ideologically, against Party dictates.

Cotterill's books include The Coroner’s Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, Disco for the Departed, Anarchy and Old Dogs, and Curse of the Pogo Stick, all featuring seventy-three year old Dr. Siri Paiboun, national coroner of Laos. The Dr. Siri series has received a Dilys Award win and a Barry Award nomination. Killed at the Whim of a Hat is the first book in the Jimm Juree Mystery series. Name Pronunciation Colin Cotterill: COT-er-ill. Other books by Colin Cotterill at BookBrowse. Membership Advantages. Author: Colin Cotterill. Guesthouse Number One1. The Red-Tag Bag Room2. A Restaurant with No Food3. The Amateur Interpreter of English6. The Cave of the Dead7.

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Colin Cotterill (born 2 October 1952) is a London-born teacher, comic book writer and cartoonist. Cotterill has dual English and Australian citizenship; however, he lives in Southeast Asia, where he writes the award-winning Dr. Siri mystery series set in Lao People's Democratic Republic, and the Jimm Juree crime novels set in southern Thailand. Colin Cotterill was born in London and trained as a teacher.

Поиск книг BookFi BookSee - Download books for free. Disco for the Departed (Soho Crime). Категория: Юридические науки, Криминология, криминалистика.

I have loved Colin Cotterill's characters since I opened his first book in this series. This is the third of Colin Cotterill's novels of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the spry and wily septuagenarian national coroner for the Democratic People's Republic of Laos. The venue is fresh, and one is entertained while learning something about a culture that is so little-known in the west. Siri Paiboun, the septuagenarian d-(in duress)-pathologist, is a delight. It is also the most ambitious of the series, adding a few layers of depth and gravity to its relatively lighthearted predecessors. Disco for the departed. by. Cotterill, Colin. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books. t on September 21, 2011.

Talk about Disco for the Departed

Delan

This is a terrific series. I suggest starting at the beginning for the character development and for a better understanding of the impact these characters have on each other and the events around them. Dr. Siri is such an interesting character living in 1970's Laos, dealing with the communist regime as it grows and becomes more fully established. I've learned quite a bit about that part of the world and its perspective on living with communism from the inside, rather than looking at it from the outside, as I always have. Interesting, but not the crux of the story. Communism is more like another character in the book. The story, while it involves solving a murder, is more about Dr. Siri, his nurse, Dtui, their aid at the morgue (Siri is the country's mortician) and their relationship with each other and those around them. There's a bit of mystery, a bit of mysticism, a bit of intrigue and a bit of humor. I love it!

Ynneig

The entire Dr. Siri series is quite well written. Almost every book has a very good story line. The characters are very well developed and the mysteries are well thought out and fun to read.

Partly because these series take place in an Eastern country (Laos) there is that whole supernatural element to them. The main character (Dr. Siri) hosts a thousand year old Shaman in his body. Now, if you can't get over having to accept that, you should definitely skip reading these books because that part is central to all of them. I thought that it might bother me but the way the author introduces this fact and weaves it into the story, makes you kind of just go with it. I now find that it doesn't bother me at all and in fact, adds to the story.

Ironically, what's more unbelievable for me is that a 73 year old can do all the things Dr. Siri does, suffer such horrible injuries and just keep going. Having parents in that age range, it seems to me very unlikely that people of that age could bounce back so quickly from all the various injuries Dr. Siri sustains.

Be that as it may, these books are all definitely worth reading. Not only are they great stories, they have taught me so much about Laos, it's culture and its history, something I knew absolutely nothing about. I read some reviews saying that the books are propaganda or re-writing of history. My thought is that you read historical fiction to get a feel for the country, culture, habits, etc., and if you want an accurate history, you read a few historical books and make up your own mind. This author's portrayal of the US-Laos conflict is not God's word and I don't think he expects it to be!

Overall, I recommend this entire series.

Malhala

The third novel in the Dr. Siri series adds another even more complexity to the several mysteries and important characters in the first and second installments. Author Colin Cotterill sets the novel in a remote northern province that was important in the Pathet Lao struggle for independence, stretching the reader out of the more familiar Venitiane setting. The reader also learns about the role of Cubans in the independence struggle and new communist state, and Cuban spiritualism intertwines with Laotian spiritualism in the resolution of one mystery. In addition to Siri, the characters of nurse Dtui and the morgue assistant Mr. Geung play large roles in this book, and Cotterill switches between their plot lines cleverly, often continuing on a topic and making the reader work to determine which character now is being described. The mix of engaging characters, unfamiliar settings, suspense, supernatural elements, and humor is unique. These novels are very well constructed.

MisterMax

I really love the Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery series. I'm taken to another time, 1977, and another place, the country of Laos, just beginning to gather itself after the People's Revolutionary Party ousted the King and the French. Siri is the National Coroner, and though he'd like to retire from his job, there's one part he doesn't want to leave. That's solving the mysteries of the bodies brought to him.

Or the bodies he's taken to. In this case, he and his right hand, Nurse Dtui, are summoned north from their morgue in the Lao capital of Vientiane. They are staying in Guest House Number Two, near the caves where the communists plotted and planned for decades. The area has been turned into a kind of nostalgic resort for the faithful. A "here-is-where-it-started" destination.

Unfortunately, a big rock fell on one of the new sidewalks, busting it open and revealing an arm. Of a very dead person entombed in the concrete. Siri must investigate, and what he finds makes everybody uncomfortable. He meets old friends, but can old friends be trusted?

As always, Cotterill's writing is clever and evocative. "Bones cracked as the doctor eased himself to a sitting position, half in and half out of the mosquito netting. If he'd slept, he certainly had no recollection of it. Now that he was seventy-three years of age, time had acquired a value, and he'd just given away six hours of the stuff without getting anything in return."

I usually give five stars to the Dr. Siri books. This one, the third in the series, I've given four stars because the mystery seems to take a distant second place to character development. I'm all for finding out more about Siri, but in "Disco for the Departed", the mystery almost gets lost for a while.

Most of the diversion has to do with Siri's accelerating access to the dead, through dreams and visions. I have no problem with this. It's handled with respect, as is voudou, animism, Buddhism. But it makes the mystery part of the story less urgent and forefront.

All in all, though, this is still recommended reading and the Siri Paiboun series is simply great. Though the mysteries are stand-alone, I'd recommend reading the seven books in the Siri series in order if you can. You can start with the first, the excellent:
The Coroner's Lunch

The last in the series,
Slash and Burn: A Dr. Siri Mystery Set in Laos
is really top-rate, excellent story-telling and mystery.

Happy Reader

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