Anarchy
and Old Dogs
A
Dr. Siri Paiboun Mystery
Colin
Cotterill
Soho
Crime (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-56947-501-6 (1569475016)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-501-0 (9781569475010)
Publication Date: August 2008
List Price: $12.00
Synopsis (from the publisher): A blind retired dentist has been run down by a logging truck on the street in Vientiane just opposite the post office. His body is duly delivered to the morgue of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the official and only coroner of Laos. At the age of seventy-three, Dr. Siri is too old to be in awe of the new Communist bureaucrats for whom he now works. He identifies the corpse, helped by the letter in the man’s pocket. But first he must decipher it; it is written in code and invisible ink. The dentist’s widow explains that the enigmatic letters and numbers describe chess moves, but they are unlike any chess symbols Siri has previously encountered. With the help of his old friend, Civilai, now a senior member of the Laos politburo, and of Nurse Dtui (“Fatty”), Phosy, a police officer, and Aunt Bpoo, a transvestite fortune-teller, Dr. Siri solves the mystery of the note to the blind dentist and foils a plot to overthrow the government of Laos.
Review:
Colin Cotterill’s Anarchy and
Old Dogs,
the fourth in his Dr. Siri Paiboun series, serves up another
history/mystery with a distinctly Asian flavour. And with the
seventy-three year old comically eccentric coroner and his wannabee CSI
team wandering around Laos, Vietnam and Thailand looking for ghosts,
lost children, murderers, and ideological roots and revolutionaries
past and present, it’s just as appealing as each of its
predecessors.
Cotterill’s books, this one included, are delightfully
humorous as Dr. Siri goes about his business of solving murders, saving
his own aging skin and bending and breaking the rules of the political
regime under which he works. In Anarchy,
he sets out to discover why a blind man, a former dentist, was run down
by an army logging truck in August 1977 on a street where
“two cars passing at the same time would be considered a
traffic jam.” In his search he finds the man’s
widow and a set of codes written in invisible ink, which he partially
deciphers, at least enough to learn a revolution is brewing. Meanwhile,
a government official has been electrocuted in a Russian-built
electrically-warmed bathtub and he must investigate that death as well.
This leads him to travel to the city of Pakse, “a city built
on greed” and “the seat of the royal
underpants.” For support, he takes along his best friend,
Civilai Songsawat, a septuagenarian bureaucrat who has become
“a cocktail Party member.” As the two search for
clues to the murder, the electrocution and the possible political coup,
they reminisce about the good old days of their idealism in ousting the
French from their Laos homeland. And unexpectedly they are confronted
with the bizarre drowning of a schoolboy who “could swim
before he could walk.” There’s additional action
and more adventures when Nurse Dtui and Officer Phosy, two other
members of Dr. Siri’s hometown entourage pose as a married
couple and set out to follow him, but end in a refugee camp where their
own lives are endangered.
As in his earlier books, Cotterill uses this one to detail the history
of the regional conflicts and the ravages and political upsets that
resulted from them. But whether it is life on the streets or in the
refugee camp or in the recollections of ‘the old
dogs’ during their bouts of drunken revelry, the history in
the book always remains an appropriate background for the mysteries of
the deaths and the impending coup. Cotterill makes excellent use of
humour as well, especially in an episode with Nurse Dtui and Officer
Phosy escaping the refugee camp with the unwitting help of Brother Fred
of the Church of the Christian Brotherhood. The search for the
Devil’s Vagina adds some sauce as well. And almost every page
has a memorable phrase or two. Coffee, for example, becomes strong
enough to “cut through a hangover like a cyclone through a
barn,” while a drop of rain falls “as thick and
heavy as a cow pat,” and Siri mixes his cocktails as
“half rice whisky and the other half rice whisky.”
The solutions to the deaths, whether by truck, electrocution or
drowning, are teasingly spun out, while the revelation about who is the
source for the coup comes as a shocking surprise. The ensemble cast of
characters is memorable too with the transvestite fortune-telling,
Auntie Bpoo, gaining more than his/her fifteen minutes of fame and
exiting with a prediction that by the Lao New Year the
seventy-three-year-old Dr. Siri would be married and he “and
his new bride would have two bouncing baby boys” –
even more reason to safely predict that the next novel in the Dr. Siri
Paiboun series will be another enticing five star entertainment.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Anarchy and Old Dogs and to Soho Press for providing a trade paperback edition of the book for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham — All Rights Reserved — Reprinted with Permission
Have you read Anarchy and Old Dogs? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
The
Coroner's
Lunch
Soho Press (Hardcover), December 2004
ISBN-10: 1-56947-376-5 (1569473765)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-376-4 (9781569473764)
Thirty-Three
Teeth
Soho Press (Hardcover), July 2005
ISBN-10: 1-56947-388-9 (1569473889)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-388-7 (9781569473887)
Disco for
the
Departed
Soho Press (Hardcover), June 2006
ISBN-10: 1-56947-428-1 (1569474281)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-428-0 (9781569474280)
Anarchy and Old Dogs
Soho Crime (Trade Paperback), August 2008
ISBN-10: 1-56947-501-6 (1569475016)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-501-0 (9781569475010)
Curse of the Pogo Stick
Soho Crime (Hardcover), August 2008
ISBN-10: 1-56947-485-0 (1569474850)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-485-3 (9781569474853)
The Merry Misogynist
Soho Press (Hardcover), August 2009
ISBN-10: 1-56947-566-3 (1569475663)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-566-0 (9781569475660)
Omnimystery
keywords for Anarchy and Old Dogs
...
Location(s) referenced: Laos.
