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Start giftingCurse of the Pogo Stick
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Learn moreIn Vientiane, Laos, a booby-trapped corpse intended for Dr. Siri, the national coroner, has been delivered to the morgue. In his absence, only Nurse Dtui’s intervention saves the lives of the morgue attendants, visiting doctors, and Madame Daeng, Dr. Siri’s fiancée.
On his way back from a Communist party meeting in the north, Dr. Siri is kidnapped by seven female Hmong villagers under the direction of the village elder so that he will—in the guise of Yeh Ming, the thousand-year-old shaman with whom he shares his body—exorcise the headman’s daughter, whose soul is possessed by a demon, and lift the curse of the pogo stick.
Colin Cotterill has won the Dilys Award and a Crime Writers of America Dagger and has been a finalist for several other awards. Born in London, he has worked as teacher in Israel, Australia, the United States, and Japan before he started training teachers in Thailand. He lives with his wife in a small fishing village on the Gulf of Siam in Southern Thailand.
Clive Chafer is a professional actor, director, producer, and theater instructor. Originally from England, he has performed on stage in the United States at many theaters, including California Shakespeare Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Magic Theater, Utah Shakespearean Festival, and American Players Theater (Wisconsin). In 1993, he founded TheatreFIRST, the San Francisco Bay Area's only internationally oriented theater. He has taught theater at the University of San Francisco and the University of Portsmouth in the UK. His audiobook credits include The Last Lion, part three of William Manchester's epic biography of Winston Churchill (for which he won an AudioFile Earphones Award), Colin Cotterill's series of crime novels set in 1970s Laos and featuring the wonderful character of Siri Paiboun, the country's only coroner, and Cornelius Ryan's seminal WWII accounts The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far. He gained his Master of Fine Arts in staging Shakespeare from Exeter University in 2000 and graduated from the Drama Studio London in 1983. He has been a member of Equity and SAG-AFTRA for over twenty-five years. He recently moved back to his native England, and continues to narrate, act, and teach theater there.
Reviews
“[Cotterill’s] stories may glide by on their humor and wonderful characters, but the reason his books come alive, the reason his series continues to be worth reading, is the author’s deep understanding of these people and their beautiful, troubled land. This depth enables him to bring us there for a brief vacation, make us feel, and still keep us laughing. Like Dr. Siri, Colin Cotterill has a touch of magic about him.”
“Cotterill’s approach in Curse of the Pogo Stick—so measured and offhand—actually achieves a remarkable feat: it cuts through all the never-again media saturation genocidal regimes often generate, and it makes us take notice once more. We wind up caring about Cotterill’s characters, because they’re mostly either decent or at least understandably flawed and therefore human. By avoiding the nastiness and nihilism of noir, they reach a sympathetic, soulful reality writers rarely pull off.”
“In the engaging fifth entry in Cotterill’s unusual crime series set in 1970s Laos, members of the Hmong tribe, an oppressed minority, spirit away coroner Siri Paiboun…Cotterill sympathetically depicts the Hmong’s plight, striking a good balance between comedy and seriousness.”
“In this delightful, fifth Dr. Siri novel…Cotterill once again manages a winning combination of elements: crisp plotting, exotic locations, endearing characters, political satire, witty dialogue, otherworldly phenomena, and a deep understanding of Hmong culture…Superb storytelling.”
“Cotterill’s ironic pen [is] as sharp as ever.”
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