The long-awaited follow-up to Slash and Burn and the ninth installment in Colin Cotterill's bestselling mystery series starring the inimitable Lao national coroner, Dr. Siri
In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. But now she's clairvoyant and can speak to the dead. That's why the long-dead brother of a Lao general has enlisted her to help his brother uncover his remains, which have been lost at the bottom of a river for many years.
Lao national coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, are sent along to supervise the excavation. It could be a kind of relaxing vacation for them, maybe, except Siri is obsessed with the pretty, undead medium's special abilities, and Madame Daeng might be a little jealous. She doesn't trust the woman for some reason. Is her hunch right? What is the group really digging for at the bottom of this remote river on the Thai border? What war secrets are being covered up?
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“This quirky mystery is filled with
unforgettably strange characters.…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.”
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Booklist (starred review)