Colin Cotterill

• Born: October 2, 1952
• Place of Birth: London, England

TYPES OF PLOT: Amateur sleuth; historical

PRINCIPAL SERIES: Dr. Siri Paiboun, 2004-; Jimm Juree 2011-

Contribution

Colin Cotterill, a career educator in underserved regions of the world and a strong children’s advocate, began writing genre fiction early in the twenty-first century. He has drawn considerable attention in short order. His main literary contribution consists of the creation of a unique protagonist operating during a specific—and intriguing—historical time frame, within a colorful, largely unfamiliar cultural environment.

Cotterill knows his territory well, having lived and worked for years among the ordinary folk of Australia, Thailand, Japan, and Laos. A landlocked country, Laos is sandwiched between Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and China. Its capital is Vientiane, situated on the Mekong River along the border of Thailand. The country, the city, and the era—the mid-1970s, after the Pathet Lao, backed by the Soviet Union and North Vietnam, forced King Savang Vatthama to abdicate—are all brought to life by Cotterill’s straightforward, ironic, readable prose.

The author paints a geographic, social, and historical backdrop against which a fascinating cast of characters, led by wise man and wise guy Dr. Siri Paiboun, are put into motion. The actors, like breathing humans from any place or time, are prey to all life’s foibles, like lust, greed, jealousy, and revenge. They gripe about the weather and the inflation rate. They make errors of judgment and leap to conclusions. Their speech, like that of real people, is peppered with profanity and slang, and they prove by example that despite differences in place, time, and heritage, people are all alike in some ways.

Cotterill’s series novels have picked up momentum, both critically and commercially, since The Coroner’s Lunch debuted to acclaim in 2004. In 2007, following its translation into French, the novel won an award for Best European Crime Novel given by the French National Railways, entitling the author to a year’s free rides on French trains. Cotterill’s follow-up, Thirty-three Teeth (2005), won the 2006 Dilys Award as a bookseller’s favorite.

Cotterill continued writing through the 2020s, publishing a novel nearly every year between 2004 and 2020, including Curse of the Pogo Stick (2008), Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010), Six and a Half Deadly Sins (2015), The Rat Catchers' Olympics (2017), The Second Biggest Nothing (2019), and The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot (2020). Additionally, in 2011, Cotterill published the first novel in his Jumm Juree international mystery series, Killed at the Whim of a Hat. The series also includes Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach (2012), The Axe Factor (2014), and The Amok Runners (2016).

Biography

Colin Cotterill was born October 2, 1952, in London and grew up near Wimbledon, where he was an avid reader of comic books, material that inspired his own love of illustration. He attended Berkshire College, earning a teacher-training diploma in 1975, and afterward embarked on a career as a teacher, teaching instructor, and curriculum developer that led him to various parts of the world. He was a physical education instructor in Israel before moving to Australia, where from he taught grades four through six at Corpus Christi in Glenroy, Victoria. In Perth, Western Australia, Cotterill worked with refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma as a teacher with the Migrant Education Department (1978-1979), an experience that spurred his further interest in Southeast Asia. After receiving a graduate diploma at Sydney University, Cotterill worked in New South Wales as an adult migrant educator (1980-1982) and as a materials developer (1985-1986). Between stints, he taught (1982-1983) at Tokai University, Kanagawa, Japan.

From 1986 to 1988, Cotterill served as teacher and curriculum developer at Chiang Mai University in Thailand. For the next two years, working in the television department of Open University in Nonthaburi, Thailand, he was writer, producer, editor, and actor in a nationally broadcast, English-language teaching program in the form of a situation comedy series, English by Accident.

Between 1990 and 1994, under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Cotterill served as a teacher trainer and curriculum developer for the Ministry of Education at Dong Dok University and Dakse Teachers’ College in Vientiane, People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. He returned to Thailand, where from 1995 to 1997, he wrote curricula at Prince of Songkla University in Phuket and became project director for Child-Watch, an organization formed for the protection of sexually abused and exploited children. Cotterill served as a teacher-trainer and materials developer at refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border, then received a certificate in community welfare from the Sydney Institute of Technology in Australia.

After serving another year with Child-Watch—during which time Cotterill wrote articles and drew cartoons for local publications, and produced a novel and two nonfictional books about child protection, published in English in Thailand—he became involved with ECPAT International (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). For two years, he acted as training coordinator for the organization in Bangkok.

In 2002, Cotterill settled in northern Thailand, where he works as a writer, cartoonist, and occasional graduate teacher at Chiang Mai University. Following the publication of another Thai-published novel, Evil in the Land Without: From England to Burma, a Monster Seeks Revenge (2003), Cotterill released his first internationally distributed novel, The Coroner’s Lunch, which introduced the mystery series character Dr. Siri Paiboun. The series continued with Thirty-three Teeth, which won the Dilys Award; Disco for the Departed (2006); and Anarchy and Old Dogs (2007). He contributed a Dr. Siri short story to Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir (2006) and also published a comic novel, Pool and Its Role in Asian Communism (2005), available only in Thailand. Cotterill was married in 2006.

Analysis

Colin Cotterill’s major protagonist, Dr. Siri Paiboun, represents the conjunction of several qualities unusual in mystery and detective fiction. At seventy-two years of age, Siri is more elderly than typical sleuths ( ’s Miss Marple is a notable exception). The doctor is also a communist of long standing, albeit chronically lackadaisical about adhering strictly to the tenets of socialism. Though other communist detectives exist, including Russians such as ’s Arkady Renko and ’s Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, Laotian communist sleuths are scarce.

Siri, a Paris-trained physician and longtime field surgeon during successive communist movements, is pressed into service as a coroner despite his advanced age and lack of specialized training. Although he just wants to retire, he is appointed coroner for the entire country, a key official position fraught with political and social consequences. Siri, ever curious, makes the best of a bad situation that features antiquated instruments, eager but meager help from a pair of assistants, a nonexistent budget, and uncooperative bureaucrats. The son of a Hmong shaman and the embodiment of Yeh Ming, an ancient shaman, Siri struggles to understand his own seemingly supernatural powers—he constantly dreams of dead people and gains subtle clues about their demise. He meanwhile has to cope with local superstition and custom, Buddhist beliefs, and atheistic communist thought when traveling to view corpses in the far-flung corners of Laos. His day job is dissecting cadavers brought to the morgue of a hospital in Vientiane, a city of only 150,000, diminished in population because many people fled to neighboring Thailand before the communist takeover.

The milieu of Cotterill’s Dr. Siri novels is already intriguing for its ethnic and geographic diversity, its indigenous beliefs and customs, its colorful garb and exotic foodstuffs, and its ancient monuments and temples. Elephants, tigers, bears, extravagant flowers, and gaudy butterflies can be seen in the mountains and jungles and along Mekong riverbanks. The immediate political climate lends a further layer of interest. Each of Cotterill’s series novels, beginning with The Coroner’s Lunch, is set during a time of upheaval in a region of widespread unrest. The Pathet Lao movement that culminated in the forced abdication of the Laotian king mostly escaped notice in the West, grown weary of Southeast Asia after skirmishes in Indochina turned into the full-scale conflict of the Vietnam War. The situation provides opportunities for clashes among various factions: primitive tribes, Communist true believers, bureaucrats and paper-pushers, peasants, Buddhist monks, and ordinary Laotians of every stripe.

Siri—grown cynical but not overly crusty from having seen much in his years—moves restlessly among the throng. He has a forceful, direct personality and often must swim against the flow of a rigidly structured society to make waves. Siri is blessed with a subtle, sarcastic wit (his zingers often go right over the heads of his superiors), an insatiable curiosity, an occult connection to mysterious spiritual forces, an intuitive nature, and superior deductive abilities. A cadre of regulars assists him in the pursuit of truth—practical Dtui, cheerful Mr. Geung, efficient Phosy, and his brilliant, witty boyhood chum Civilai—each of whom brings particular skills and lends a distinct personality to the mix.

Realistic dialogue and dark humor are two final indispensable ingredients to the popularity of Cotterill’s series. The author has a talent for description and is particularly skilled at matching speech to character in such a way that attributions are seldom necessary: A reader always knows who is speaking. Siri’s witty, anarchistic observations, Dtui’s sarcastic remarks, and Civilai’s grousing comments are echoed in the novel’s pun-filled chapter headings, which add to the fun (chapters in Thirty-three Teeth, for example, are titled “Tomb Sweet Tomb,” “A Day at the Maul,” and “Das Capital Royal”). A continuing humorous theme is the sweltering Laotian countryside. This standard exchange, apparently the native manner of greeting, recurs so many times in so many different places between so many different characters that the reader begins to anticipate it:

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

Those terse words serve to explain much about Laos and its people: the preoccupation with weather, the natural friendliness of citizens, the fatalistic acceptance of the unchangeable, and the conformity to long tradition. They also underscore the multiple appeals of Cotterill’s mystery fiction.

The Coroner’s Lunch

The Coroner’s Lunch, the first novel in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series, introduces Dr. Siri, the feisty elderly coroner with almost supernatural powers of deduction, thanks to his allegedly being the reincarnation of Yeh Ming, a powerful Hmong shaman. As is typical throughout the series, Siri is presented with a variety of diverse cases to resolve to the satisfaction of a mistrustful, paranoiac government in transition from kingdom to communist bureaucracy, despite the fact that he has had no training in pathology and is provided with few supplies and inadequate tools to do a proper job. In the initial novel in the series, Siri must work to unravel the truth behind the accidental death of a fisherman, the appearance of three bodies that rise from the Mekong River after being dropped into the water with Chinese bombs tied around their ankles, the sudden demise of the wife of a high-ranking official, and the apparent suicide of the man’s mistress. Siri must also cope with efforts from different sources to prevent his work: bodies that are removed from the morgue’s freezer, autopsy notes gone missing, sabotage, assassination attempts, and administrative roadblocks.

A fascinating glimpse into a little-known society during events largely ignored in the West following the fiasco of the Vietnam War, The Coroner’s Lunch sets in motion a cast of well-drawn characters with individual mannerisms and speech patterns that bring them to vibrant life. The novel skillfully incorporates colorful Laotian culture, history, and geography while capturing the atmosphere of a volatile era.

Thirty-three Teeth

Thirty-three Teeth, the second novel in the series (the title refers to the legend that Buddha, like Dr. Siri, was alleged to have an extra tooth, a sign of great power), witnesses the hero involved in a number of diverse cases. The coroner enlists the aid of his usual allies—Dtui, Gueng, Phosy, and Civilai—to reconstruct the events surrounding and the causes behind a series of mysterious deaths: two men found together beside a crushed bicycle, a pair of women clawed to death by either an escaped bear or a marauding tiger, and a pair of charred corpses found in Luang Prabang, apparently shot before burning.

Principal Series Characters:

• Dr. Siri Paiboun is a seventy-two-year-old Paris-trained Laotian physician who served nearly forty years beside his wife—a rabid revolutionary—as field surgeon to the communist Pathet Lao before they took control of Laos in the mid-1970s. Reluctantly appointed the country’s only coroner in late 1975, the widowed Dr. Siri works in Vientiane, from an ill-equipped morgue in a hospital. Cynical, a fan of Georges Simenon’s detective Maigret, Siri is white-haired and stooped, with bushy white eyebrows and emerald-green eyes. The son of a Hmong shaman and the re-embodiment of Yeh Ming, a shaman who lived a thousand years before, Siri is a lapsed Buddhist and often dreams of the dead, gaining insight into their personalities and an inkling of how they died.
• Chundee “Dtui” Chantavongheuan is a trained nurse who serves as Siri’s assistant in the morgue. Plain-faced and solidly built, she is the only adult survivor of eleven children and lives with her mother, who suffers from cirrhosis. Dtui is intelligent, kind, and resourceful, with a wicked sense of humor, and a fan of comic books. She has aspirations of furthering her education to become a certified pathologist.
• Mr. Geung is a morgue technician who works with Siri and Dtui. A friendly, hard worker with a cheerful manner, Geung was born with Down syndrome, which limits his learning abilities; however, he possesses an almost photographic memory. He is usually the first to arrive at the morgue each working day.
• Civilai, two days older than Siri (thus, jocularly called “Ai,” older brother) and the doctor’s best friend, is a member of the ruling politburo. Brilliant, eccentric, scrawny, and bald, he wears large glasses that give him an inquisitive appearance. Civilai shares lunch with Siri daily on the banks of the Mekong River, acting as a sounding board for the doctor’s theories, and he often assists his friend in his dealings with the government.
• Inspector Phosy is a member of the National Police Force, and an ally of Dr. Siri. A handsome, slender man in his forties who has the ability to procure items in short supply—such as alcoholic beverages that he shares with Siri as they discuss cases—Phosy tools about Vientiane on a lilac-colored Vespa.

Bibliography

Cotterill, Colin. Colin Cotterill, www.colin-cotterill.com. Accessed 10 Aug. 2024.

Kirkus Reviews. Review of The Coroner’s Lunch, by Colin Cotterill, vol. 72, no. 16, 15 Aug. 2004, p. 779.

Klett, Rex E. “Mystery: The Noir Detectives.” Review of The Coroner’s Lunch, by Colin Cotterill. Library Journal, vol. 129, no. 20, Dec. 2004, pp. 94-95.

Sennett, Frank. Review of Anarchy and Old Dogs, by Colin Cotterill. Booklist, vol. 103, no. 17, 1 May 2007, pp. 20-21.

Stasio, Marilyn. “Crime: Immaterial Witness.” Review of The Coroner’s Lunch, by Colin Cotterill. The New York Times Book Review, 26 Dec. 2004, p. 22.