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Mysteries- First in a series
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Shop nowThe Coroner’s Lunch
The Dr. Siri Paiboun Series: Book #1
Narrator
Clive Chafer
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Length
7 hours 26 minutes
Language
English
Laos, 1975. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over this former French colony. Dr. Siri Paiboun, a seventy-two-year-old Paris-trained doctor, is appointed national coroner. Although he has no training for the job, there is no one else: the rest of the educated class have fled.
He is expected to come up with the answers the party wants, but crafty and charming Dr. Siri is immune to bureaucratic pressure. At his age, he reasons, what can they do to him? And he knows he cannot fail the dead who come into his care without risk of incurring their boundless displeasure. Eternity could be a long time to have the spirits mad at you.
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 and educated at Leeds and Exeter universities, he has performed and directed at many theaters in the San Francisco area, where he makes his home, and elsewhere in the US. In 1993 he founded TheatreFIRST, Oakland’s professional theater company, where he served as artistic director until 2008.
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Reviews
“This series kickoff is an embarrassment of riches: Holmesian sleuthing, political satire, and [a] droll comic study of a prickly late bloomer.”
“This is a winner.”
“A wonderfully fresh and exotic mystery…If Cotterill…had done nothing more than treat us to Siri’s views on the dramatic, even comic crises that mark periods of government upheaval, his debut mystery would still be fascinating. But the multiple cases spread out on Siri’s examining table…are not cozy entertainments but substantial crimes that take us into the thick of political intrigue.”
“The sights, smells, and colors of Laos practically jump of the pages of this inspired, often wryly witty first novel.”
“The Soho Press crime series…has done mystery connoisseurs everywhere a favor by adding Colin Cotterill to its publishing list. The author gives us exotic locations; a world that few of us know well; crisp, intelligent, and often witty writing; and, most of all, a hero unlike any other.”
“In Siri, Cotterill has created a detective as distinctive as Maigret or Poirot.”
“Engaging…This debut mystery, with its convincing and highly interesting portrayal of an exotic locale, marks the author as someone to watch.”
“If Siri lives long enough, he’ll make a wry, eccentric addition to the genre.”
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