Slash and Burn
A Dr. Siri Mystery Set in Laos
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4.5 • 29 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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 pilot who went down in the remote northern Lao jungle ten years earlier. And the stakes are high. The presence of American soldiers in Laos is controversial, and the search party includes high-level politicians and scientists. So when a member of the party is found dead, Dr. Siri suspects it may not have been an accident. Can Dr. Siri get to the bottom of the MIA pilot’s mysterious story before the body count rises and the fortune-teller’s prediction comes true?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in the summer of 1978, Cotterill's outstanding eighth mystery starring Laotian coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2010's Love Songs from a Shallow Grave) promises to be the series' last. The 74-year-old Paiboun hopes to stay out of trouble until he retires in a couple of months, but a high-profile inquiry into the fate of a U.S. airman, Capt. Boyd Bowry, who disappeared a decade earlier, ensures otherwise. Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, accompany a delegation that includes Americans to the region where Bowry's helicopter allegedly crashed. Murder follows the mission, giving Paiboun one last case to solve. The legitimate fair-play puzzle provides the stage for the book's captivating lead, who in one instance uses a clever ruse to cut down on the vast number of false claims of Laotians to be in possession of human remains that could be MIAs sought by foreigners. The author deftly inserts humor into what could easily have been an unrelentingly grim plot line.
