Disco for the Departed
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
Dr Siri Paiboun may be in his seventy-third year, but he's still as sturdy as a jungle boar - and as crafty as one. Reluctant coroner to the Lao People's Democratic Republic, he's been despatched to the country's mountainous north where the sudden appearance of a mummified arm protruding from a concrete path laid in front of the President's new mansion has caused an understandable degree of embarrassment.
Dr Siri's disinterment and autopsy of the body attached to the arm provide some grisly surprises but it is his gifts as a shaman that put the septuagenarian doctor on the trail of the killer. As Siri and his team close in, they must tackle a marriage proposal, brave the perils of life on the open road, and come face-to-face with a horrific sacrificial ritual. Is it any wonder Dr Siri takes up disco dancing?
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.
