The Rat Catchers' Olympics

June 12, 2017
In Cotterill’s delightful 12th whodunit starring Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2016’s I Shot the Buddha), Siri manages to become the medical officer for the 1980 Lao Olympic team, led by his best friend, Comrade Civilai. Of course, Siri’s wife, Madame Daeng, has to go, too. An old acquaintance of Civilai’s, Major Lien, is on the Lao shooting team, but Lien disappears between the photo-taking session at Vientiane’s Wattay Airport and the plane carrying the team to Moscow. Siri, Daeng, and Civilai wonder whether the person with a false name who replaces Lien on the team might be an assassin, and, if so, who in Moscow might be his target. Cotterill does a fine job of capturing the spectacle of the Olympic village and games along with the way that the Lao team enthusiastically participates despite being destined to lose every event. He performs marvelous narrative tricks, using red herrings, tangents of all sorts, and a surprise, bonus murder to keep readers guessing. A competition between rat catchers from Laos, Botswana, and Moscow is a highlight. This quirky mystery has heart and humor in equal measure.

June 15, 2017
Cotterill's curmudgeonly coroner visits the Moscow Olympics, uncovering diverse dastardly deeds.Though subversive Dr. Siri has left his post as Laotian national coroner, his interest in politics and the world at large remains acute. Because of the international boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Laos has a rare opportunity to send athletes to the games for the first time. Siri uses deliciously underhanded means to accompany the Laotian athletes as team doctor. A starchy retired bureaucrat named Civilai heads up their delegation. When she hears of the trip, blunt nurse Dtui, Siri's former sidekick at the coroner's office, insists on joining this adventure over the objections of her husband, Inspector Phosy, and the needs of their young child. Add Siri's high-maintenance wife, Madame Daeng, and the adventure is sure to be eventful. Keeping the unsophisticated athletes focused, a job that's like herding cats, gets even more complicated when Civilai receives a call from home letting him know that an as-yet-unnamed member of the team is actually an assassin. The group decides to keep a watchful eye on their charges, which turns out to be a poor decision, as evidence piles up and disaster seems imminent. While Phosy investigates back in Laos, Siri visits the assassin's reported target. For their part, Madame Daeng and Dtui seem more interested in ogling the athletes than helping with the probe. The 12th case for the irrepressible Laotian coroner (I Shot the Buddha, 2016, etc.) has a rambling plot but crackles with humor and overflows with eccentric characters. Droll chapter titles add an extra soupcon of mirth.

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July 1, 2017

In his 12th adventure (after I Shot the Buddha), retired coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun and his wife score a trip to the 1980 Moscow Olympics as medical advisers to the Democratic People's Republic of Laos team. When a team member is accused of murder, Siri must solve the crime under the eye of two mistrustful governments. All the hallmarks of the series are present, including humor, magic realism, and the usual eccentric characters.--ACT

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2017
In this long-running, critically acclaimed series, Cotterill's Dr. Siri Paiboun takes readers into the fear-drenched aftermath of the Communist takeover of Laos in the seventies. Dr. Paiboun (now unwillingly retired) and his wife, Madame Daeng, both have front-row seats for the spectacle of life under the wildly corrupt, ever-changing Communist regimehe, as a doctor and former national coroner of Laos, and Madame Daeng, as the proprietor of their village's most popular noodle shop. In this, the twelfth installment, the year is 1980, and Laos has been invited to compete in the Olympic Games held in Moscow. Dr. Paiboun, ever eager to escape the doldrums of retirement, volunteers to accompany the hapless Laotian athletes (they have no training and no equipment) to Moscow as team doctor. The Games become a nightmare for Paiboun, as he first must investigate an impostor among the athletes and then a murder. Along with a mystery that boils over into an international incident, Cotterill gives readers a wonderful re-creation of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Village and the preparations for the Games themselves. Cotterill does some bizarre things with his main characters, like giving Madame Daeng a tail and having Dr. Paiboun leave his body to communicate with spirits, but these strange add-ons don't detract from the overall impact of the book. Cotterill won the Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library Award.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)