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Summary
Summary
In poverty-stricken 1978 Laos, a man with a truck from the city was "somebody," a catch for even the prettiest village virgin. The corpse of one of these bucolic beauties turns up in Dr. Siri's morgue and his curiosity is piqued. The victim was tied to a tree and strangled but she had not, as the doctor had expected, been raped, although her flesh had been torn. And though the victim had clear, pale skin over most of her body, her hands and feet were gnarled, callused, and blistered.
On a trip to the hinterlands, Siri discovers that the beautiful female corpse bound to a tree has already risen to the status of a rural myth. This has happened many times before. He sets out to investigate this unprecedented phenomenon--a serial killer in peaceful Buddhist Laos--only to discover when he has identified the murderer that not only pretty maidens are at risk. Seventy-three-year-old coroners can be victims, too.
Author Notes
Colin Cotterill is an author and cartoonist. He was born in London in 1952, and trained as a Physical Education teacher, before setting off on a world tour that hasn't ended yet. Along the way, he has held various teaching positions in Israel, Australia, the U. S., Japan, and Southeast Asia. He would eventually become involved in child protection, and it was his work with trafficked children that motivated him to write his first novel, The Night Bastard. The reaction was so positive that he decided to take time off and write full-time. Two of his subsequent novels are child-protection based: Evil in the Land Without, and Pool and its role in Asian Communism.
Cotterill may be best known as the author of the Dr. Siri Paiboun series, set in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos. Titles in the series include: Six and a Half Deadly Sins, the Woman Who Wouldn't Die, Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, The Merry Misogynist, Thirty-Three Teeth and The Coroner's Lunch.
He also pens the Jim Jurree series, set in southern Thailand. Titles in this series include: The Axe Factor, Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach and Killed at the Whim of a Hat.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-In this sixth volume in the series, the protagonist is as delightfully eccentric and unpredictably clever as ever. The national coroner of Laos, 73-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun, may dream of a carefree retirement, but he knows he will enjoy neither peace nor quiet anytime soon. While hounded and threatened by overly zealous bureaucratic bean counters, Dr. Siri is presented with the corpse of a beautiful young woman from the remote hill country. The examination of the body reveals several unaccountable details and one clear conclusion: she was brutally murdered. Further investigation points to a serial killer targeting women in remote villages. Readers learn in detail the means by which the murderer sets up his prey, but not the identity of the killer until Dr. Siri assembles all the pieces of the puzzle. Cotterill provides a detailed look at the life, customs, and political realities of a place and time unfamiliar to most Americans: Laos in the 1970s. And again he does this with his trademark combination of crisp plotting, witty dialogue, political satire, and otherworldly phenomena (although not as much in evidence here as in previous books). The Merry Misogynist is a suspenseful, informative read.-Robert Saunderson, formerly at Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Setting and character more than compensate for a routine plot in Cotterill's sixth procedural to feature Laos's irreverent 73-year-old national coroner, Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2008's Curse of the Pogo Stick). In March 1978, Siri gets into trouble after the authorities discover he's been living above his wife's noodle shop rather than in the housing assigned him by the inept and corrupt socialist government. Luckily, he's soon called to examine the body of an attractive young woman, who was found strangled, sexually abused and tied to a tree outside the capital of Vientiane. The country's backward communication methods, which even affect law enforcement, make identifying other similar crimes difficult, but Siri's doggedness eventually uncovers other such cases. While some may find the light tone the author takes in presenting the brutal crimes off-putting, the glimpses of everyday life in Laos will appeal to those readers curious about a culture unfamiliar to most Americans. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved