Colin Cotterill

When a party official's wife turns up dead in Communist Laos, an elderly doctor becomes an unlikely detective in this engaging mystery.
Dr. Siri Paiboun, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the 1975 communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but the independent seventy-two-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. And he doesn't mind incurring the wrath of the

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The eighth Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery
Dr. Siri never really wanted to be Laos’s national coroner. And now that he is in his mid-70s, he longs to spend some time with his wife before the untimely death that is sure to befall him, according to the local transvestite fortune-teller. But retirement will have to wait (again) until he has completed one last job for the Lao government: supervising an excavation for the remains of a US fighter...

The long-awaited follow-up to 2011's Slash & Burn.
 
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...

Dr. Siri Paiboun, 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 seventy-two-year-old has an outstanding qualification for the role: curiosity. And he does not mind incurring the wrath of the party's hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side—and a little too close for comfort more

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The fifth Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery
Seven female Hmong villagers kidnap Dr. Siri on orders from the village elder who hopes that Yeh Ming, the thousand-year-old shaman who shares the doctor’s body, will consent to exorcise the headman’s daughter. He fears that her soul has been possessed by a demon due to the curse of a mysterious Western artifact. Siri agrees to help and, in so doing, brings to pass a prediction of Auntie Bpoo,...

"Between getting into a tangle with a corrupt local judge, and discovering a disturbing black-market business, Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos and his friend Inspector Phosy have their hands full in the thirteenth installment of Colin Cotterill's quirky, critically acclaimed series. Dr. Siri Paiboun, the ex-national coroner of Laos, may have more experience dissecting bodies than making art, but when he manages to smuggle a fancy...

"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? To the chagrin of his wife and friends, who...

Evil in the Land Without was Colin Cotterill's second novel published in 2003 by Asia Books.
John Jessel is an English Child Protection Unit detective working on paedophile cases in Surrey. He's good at his job but is on a downhill slide as booze slowly takes over his deteriorating body and his lonely life. His recent case has got out of control. Postcards signed 'The Paw' have taken credit for the murders of several children. But The Paw also

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Jimm Juree was a crime reporter for the Chiang Mai Daily Mail with a somewhat eccentric family. When she is forced to follow her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she's convinced her career-maybe her life-is over. So when a van containing the skeletal remains of two hippies is inexplicably unearthed in a local farmer's field, Jimm is thrilled. Shortly thereafter an abbot at a local Buddhist temple is viciously murdered.Suddenly...

Jimm Juree, who was well on her way to becoming the primary crime reporter for the major daily newspaper in Chiang Mai, is less than thrilled to have lost her job and relocated to a place where nothing ever happens. When she learns that a head has washed up on the beach, she greets the news with mixed emotions. It's tragic, of course, but this could be the sort of sensational murder that would get her a byline in a major daily-if she still worked...