Year of publication: 2004 No. in series: 1 Series detective: Dr. Siri Paiboun Type of investigator: Coroner/doctor Genre: Historical mystery Type of mystery: Murder Setting & time: The Lao People’s Democratic Republic; 1976 At age 72 and after a long service to the communist cause, Dr. Siri Paiboun had been looking forward to a nice retirement, but the newly installed authorities had other ideas and appointed him as the state coroner. With no experience of the work he is expected to do, no interest in the job and limited equipment, he tries to make the best of things, but it isn’t until a comrade’s wife dies mysteriously and the bodies of three dead Vietnamese soldiers turn up in a lake that things start to get interesting. I think I have a new favourite detective. Dr. Siri is deliciously grumpy and sarcastic, but he also has the good detective’s curiosity and willingness to find out the truth no matter what, and combined with his healthy disrespect for authority...
Bookish expressions of a Bibliophile living in Reykjavík