The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

Starred review from December 24, 2012
Cotterill has never been better than in this ninth outing for acerbic Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2011’s Slash and Burn), set in Laos in October 1978. A judge who heads the country’s public prosecution department asks Siri, who has recently retired as Laos’s coroner, to look into a bizarre case. The minister of agriculture’s wife has hired Madame Keui—a witch dubbed the “used-to-be woman,” because she’s alive and kicking two months after her corpse was consigned to a funeral pyre—to help lay to rest the ghost of the minister’s brother, believed to have been killed on a covert op in 1969. Siri, who views the boundary between the natural and the supernatural worlds as porous, soon finds himself in the midst of the most baffling murder case of his career. The action builds to an ingenious resolution. A subplot adds a nice layer of depth to the character of Siri’s wife, Madame Daeng.

February 1, 2013
Thailand's crustiest coroner smells a rat when a mysterious woman returned from the dead begins making prophetic proclamations. October, 1978. Madame Used-To-Be has earned a reputation in her Lao village for dispensing bits of wisdom and accurate predictions, warming the hearts of all who visit her. What sets her apart from other prognosticators is that when she was known as Madame Keui, she was shot and killed in a burglary; villagers even saw her corpse burn on a pyre. Elderly Dr. Siri Paiboun (Slash and Burn, 2011, etc.) is drawn to this odd woman quite by accident. He's settled into marital bliss with the colorful Madame Daeng, but the government has abruptly closed his workplace, the Mahosot Hospital morgue. So Siri keeps busy with pet projects like smuggling refugees to safety. He isn't afraid to thumb his nose at Communist authorities. In fact, a judge dubs him the "cordon bleu of blackmailers" due to his ability to leverage scandals about the regime to achieve his ends. That's very awkward for Siri's tart-tongued former sidekick, Nurse Dtui, who's married to dutiful police inspector Phosy. When Siri is dispatched to the Lao village to supervise the excavation of the corpse of a prominent general's brother, he becomes intrigued with Used-To-Be, and it's anyone's guess whether he's as rapt as the humble villagers or simply ferreting out a mystery. After Cotterill's hiatus to launch another series set in Thailand (Grandpa, There's a Head on the Beach, 2012, etc.), the return of that glorious curmudgeon Dr. Siri for a ninth escapade is bliss.

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Starred review from February 15, 2013
The ninth entry in this series set in 1970s Laos has National Coroner Siri Paiboun, a man in his late seventies and perpetually on the verge of a longed-for retirement, again pulled back into service to examine remains. The road to those remains is circuitous, as is everything in communist-ruled Laos. It winds through the belief of the surviving brother of a long-dead Lao general that his brother's remains can be found through the clairvoyance of the woman of the title, a woman whom people saw burned on a funeral pyre but who appears again in the village with enhanced clairvoyant powers. It also winds through the suspicion that the excavation for the dead general's remains may really be in service of some other government goal. As Paiboun prepares to question the woman and find the remains, his new wife, Madame Daeng (who runs the most popular noodle shop in town), is stalked by one of her old French lovers. This quirky mystery is filled with unforgettably strange characters (for example, Dr. Siri is a Buddhist gourmand, crafty at getting around restrictions, haunted by thousands of spirits who appear before him regularly). It's also filled with Cotterill's dark humor, best seen in the characters' wry dialogue. Readers who appreciate reluctant cops and detectives, like Tarquin Hall's Indian sleuth, Vish Puri, or Stuart Kaminsky's Russian Inspector Rostnikov, will love Cotterill's cynical, haunted coroner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)