Showing results by author "Colin Cotterill" in All Categories

Welches Rätsel verbindet einen blinden Zahnarzt, einen wahrsagenden Transvestiten und einen laotischen Leichenbeschauer...

Viel lieber würde Dr. Siri Paiboun wie gewöhnlich Leichen untersuchen, doch ist er zu einer politischen Konferenz im Norden von Laos geschickt worden. Da fällt einer der Genossen tot vom Stuhl, Dr. Siris Diagnose: Langeweile. Währenddessen schlägt sich seine Assistentin Dtui in der Hauptstadt mit einer Leiche herum, die sich als höchst explosiv erweist. In ihrem Bauch findet sich eine Handgranate, die wohl für Dr. Siri gedacht war. Und plötzlich bekommt Dr. Siri es mit einem Fall zu tun, der die Langeweile rasch verfliegen lässt..

It is 1980, and the Democratic People's Republic of Laos is proud to be competing in its first-ever Olympics. Ex-national coroner of Laos Dr. Siri Paiboun may be retired, but he and his wife, Madame Daeng, would do just about anything to have a chance to visit Moscow, so Siri finagles them the job of medical oversight for the Olympians. As the competition heats up, however, Siri begins to suspect that one of the athletes is not who he says he is. Then another Lao Olympian is accused of murder.

Laos, 1979: Retired coroner Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, have never been able to turn away a misfit. As a result they share their small Vientiane house with an assortment of homeless people, mendicants, and oddballs. One of these oddballs is Noo, a Buddhist monk who rides out on his bicycle one day and never comes back, leaving only a cryptic note in the refrigerator - a plea to help a fellow monk escape across the Mekong River to Thailand. Naturally, Siri can't turn down the adventure.

Laos, 1979: Dr. Siri Paiboun, the twice retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a handwoven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn in northern Laos. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining?

Laos, 1981: When an unofficial mailman drops off a strange bilingual diary, Dr. Siri is intrigued. Half is in Lao, but the other half is in Japanese, which no one Siri knows can read; it appears to have been written during the Second World War. Most mysterious of all, it comes with a note stapled to it: Dr. Siri, we need your help most urgently. But who is “we”, and why have they left no return address?