In an age of young superheroes, a 72 year old Laotian coroner is not at first glance the most promising selection for protagonist of a mystery series. That’s why Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun deserves a second glance, and believe me, that’s all you’ll need to fall in love with one of the most engaging characters in the mystery field today.

E-Reads has e-books of the first two volumes in the series, The Coroner’s Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth, and if you have a taste for faraway settings, they just don’t come further away than Colin Cotterill’s.

In The Coroner’s Lunch, Dr. Siri, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent 72-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. He has survived thirty years as a revolutionary and doesn’t mind incurring the wrath of the Party hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side. When he performs an autopsy on the wife of a government official and on an unidentified body fished out of the river, it’s clear that all is not calm in the new Communist paradise of Laos.

In Thirty-Three Teeth, Dr. Siri investigates a series of deaths by what seem to be bear bites, to explain why the government official ran at full speed through a seventh story window and fell to his death, and to discover the origins of the two charred bodies from a crashed helicopter in the temple at Luang Prabang.

Some full-throated praise for The Coroner’s Lunch

”A wonderfully fresh and exotic mystery.”
–The New York Times Book Review

”The sights, smells and colors of Laos practically jump off the pages of this inspired, often wryly witty first novel.”
–Denver Post

”If Cotterill…had done nothing more than treat us to Siri’s views on the dramatic, even comic crises that mark periods of government upheaval, his debut mystery would still be fascinating. But the multiple cases spread out on Siri’s examining table…are not cozy entrtainments, but substantial crimes that take us into the thick of political intrigue,”
–The New York Times Book Review

And here’s what reviewers had to say about Thirty-Three Teeth:

”A crack storyteller and an impressive guide to a little-known culture.”
–Washington Post Book World

”The quasi-mystical story keeps a perfect balance between the modern mysteries of forensic science and the ancient secrets of the spirit world”
–The New York Times Book Review

”Readers who were charmed by Cotterill’s first novel, last year’s The Coroner’s Lunch, will be delighted to hear that his hero, the witty seventy-something Dr. Siri Paiboun, is back again.”
”Day to Day,” NPR

In an age of young superheroes, a 72 year old Laotian coroner is not at first glance the most promising selection for protagonist of a mystery series. That’s why Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun deserves a second glance, and believe me, that’s all you’ll need to fall in love with one of the most engaging characters in the mystery field today.

E-Reads has just released e-books of the first two volumes in the series, The Coroner’s Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth, and there are more to come. If you have a taste for faraway settings, they just don’t come more exotic than Colin Cotterill’s.

In The Coroner’s Lunch, Dr. Siri, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent 72-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. He has survived thirty years as a revolutionary and doesn’t mind incurring the wrath of the Party hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side. When he performs an autopsy on the wife of a government official and on an unidentified body fished out of the river, it’s clear that all is not calm in the new Communist paradise of Laos.

In Thirty-Three Teeth, Dr. Siri investigates a series of deaths by what seem to be bear bites, to explain why the government official ran at full speed through a seventh story window and fell to his death, and to discover the origins of the two charred bodies from a crashed helicopter in the temple at Luang Prabang.

Some full-throated praise for The Coroner’s Lunch

”A wonderfully fresh and exotic mystery.”
–The New York Times Book Review

”The sights, smells and colors of Laos practically jump off the pages of this inspired, often wryly witty first novel.”
–Denver Post

”If Cotterill…had done nothing more than treat us to Siri’s views on the dramatic, even comic crises that mark periods of government upheaval, his debut mystery would still be fascinating. But the multiple cases spread out on Siri’s examining table…are not cozy entrtainments, but substantial crimes that take us into the thick of political intrigue,”
–The New York Times Book Review

And here’s what reviewers had to say about Thirty-Three Teeth:

”A crack storyteller and an impressive guide to a little-known culture.”
–Washington Post Book World

”The quasi-mystical story keeps a perfect balance between the modern mysteries of forensic science and the ancient secrets of the spirit world”
–The New York Times Book Review

”Readers who were charmed by Cotterill’s first novel, last year’s The Coroner’s Lunch, will be delighted to hear that his hero, the witty seventy-something Dr. Siri Paiboun, is back again.”
”Day to Day,” NPR