Disco For the Departed
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4.4 • 10 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In Vientiane's Mahosot Hospital morgue, 73-year-old Dr Siri Paiboun, national coroner of Laos, handles the fatalities at the state hospitals—and the odd murder.
His assistants—the gorgeous, clever, fat Nurse Dtui and the slow but irreplaceable Geung—have helped Dr Siri out of scrapes before in The Coroner's Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth.
Leaving Geung guarding the morgue, Siri and Dtui land in a remote mountain village where a mummified arm is protruding from recently buckled concrete paving. Just how is this arm connected to the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Laos? What will the autopsy reveal? Can Siri decipher the messages of the departed souls that fill his dreams? And will they lead him to discover the identity of the arm's owner and find the answer to the puzzle of his death?
With a great sense of fun and a lively, loveable cast of characters, Disco for the Departed will delight fans of The Coroner's Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth and win Cotterill a whole new bunch of readers.
'Cotterill is one of the best things to happen to crime fiction in years.' Age
textpublishing.com.au
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the People's Democratic Republic of Laos in 1977, Cotterill's engrossing third mystery (after 2005's Thirty-three Teeth) takes series hero Dr. Siri Paiboun, the 73-year-old national coroner who has recently discovered his shaman ancestry, and Nurse Dtui, his no-nonsense associate, from the capital, Vientiane, to remote Vieng Xai, where a cement-entombed corpse has turned up at the Laotian president's compound. At Kilometer 8 Hospital, Paiboun and Dtui meet Dr. Santiago, a charismatic surgeon on loan from Cuba, who uncovers crucial information about the victim's identity. As they close in on the killer, Paiboun and company must deal with soul-transfer, a marriage proposal, ancient rituals, frenetic dancing, racism and more murders. Horrific sacrificial rituals coexist seamlessly with the endless, banal red tape that hampers the investigation. Paiboun's gift for conversing with the dead comes in handy as he endures such strange happenings as nightly disco music only he can hear. This witty and unusual series just keeps getting better.
