Among the awards given each year to works of crime fiction, two are issued for books judged to give the most enjoyment to their readers. Appropriately, Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery series has won both these prizes – the Dilys Award in 2006 and the Dagger in the Library in 2009. This reading pleasure continues with Slash and Burn (Soho Crime), released in the U.S. today, Dec. 6, 2011.
Set in Laos in 1978, Slash and Burn, book eight in the series, finds Dr. Siri recovering from the violence chronicled in Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010). The 74-year old physician agrees to take on one last assignment for the Communist government in Laos before he retires from his position as Laos’s national – and only – coroner.
He joins a MIA recovery expedition into the mountains of northern Laos that is headed by representatives of the highly unpopular U.S. government. Their mission is to find the body of Boyd Bowery, an American helicopter pilot whose plane went down in 1968.
With Dr. Siri are many of the associates known to readers of the earlier books in this series – his new wife, Madame Daeng; Nurse Dtui; police officer Phosy; Mr. Geung; Comrade Lit; Aunt Bpoo; and Dr. Siri’s old friend Civilai. The always irritating Judge Haeng heads the Laotian team. Senator Ulysses Vogal is in charge of the American group.
Although the details surrounding Boyd Bowery’s last flight prove intriguing, a present day death soon takes precedence. The body of one of the members of the search team is discovered in his room at the Friendship Hotel, where the group is staying.
The man's death at first appears to be a suicide, but additional attempts on the lives of those involved in the search for Boyd Bowery changes this assumption. Dr. Siri and his friends must work quickly to find the murderer in their midst.
Slash and Burn continues Cotterill’s depiction of the tragic consequences the Vietnam War had for the people of Laos. However, even with such a serious theme, he is also able to incorporate humor into his work. Describing a high mountain in northern Laos, for instance, Cotterill writes, “Fliers called it the vertical airbrake because if you overshot, it was a most effective way of slowing down, albeit terminal.”
Cotterill broke away from his Dr. Siri Paiboun books in 2011 to begin a new series set in contemporary Laos. Killed at the Whim of a Hat, the first volume in his reporter Jimm Juree series, had its U.S. release in July 2011. Granddad, There's a Head on the Beach will follow in June 2012. In an Oct. 28, 2011 Publisher’s Weekly interview, Cotterill confirmed that he plans to continue his Dr. Siri Paiboun series too.
FTC Full Disclosure: A review copy of this work was provided by Soho Crime.
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