Saturday Snippet: Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill’s lightly comic series following the exploits of Dr Siri Paiboun, the reluctant state coroner, is set in Laos in the mid-1970s, shortly after the communists come to power. In the following scene from Disco for the Departed, Nurse Dtui, his assistant, takes the opportunity to wind-up a small group of former royalist officers who have been send to the rural north-east of the country to be ‘re-programmed.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing my first pog.’
‘Your first what?’
‘Pog. My ma used to tell me about them when I was little.’
Siri looked away so the policemen wouldn’t notice his smile.
‘Can’t say I’ve ever heard of them,’ the officer confessed. ‘What are they?’
‘You can’t be serious. You haven’t heard of a pog? I admit they’re rare, but up here in the north-east the animals are never penned up. They all roam around together, the chickens, the dogs, the goats, the pigs. With the animals being the way they are, there’s a fair amount of experimentation that goes on, if you know what I mean.’
Siri could no longer control his face. He got to his feet and walked over to the front steps to look at the full moon reflected hazily on the surface of the pond. It was a beautiful setting for such a dishonest political racket. He chuckled under his breath but made it sound like a cough. Dtui continued at her most convincing best.
‘… and here in Huaphan, probably due to the altitude, or, some say, the sulphur in the water, on occasions, the union of a randy male dog and a sow, produces …’
‘You cannot be serious.’
‘I swear on my brother’s life. I’ve seen the photos. They have the face of pig and the paws and tail of a dog. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of them.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard of ‘em,’ said Officer Four.
‘You haven’t,’ said Officer Two.
‘Now that you mention it, I might have seen one on a farm just outside of Tha Reua. Didn’t know what it was, though. Odd-looking thing,’ recalled Officer One.
‘That’s right,’ said Dtui, ‘and up here they’re everywhere. If you see one around perhaps you could grab it for me. I’d love to take one back for my ma.’

What I like about the scene is that the officers are unsure of how to react and are unsure of what will make them look bigger fools – being ignorant of the existence of pogs or admitting that they know of their existence. Cotterill, I think, captures this balance between ego and worldly-wiseness and indecisiveness really well. My review of the book can be found here.

Review of Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill (Quercus, 2006)

It’s 1977 and the communists have recently come to power in the newly named, People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. Dr Siri Paiboun, a cynical party member for fifty years, a former surgeon who has served in the long campaign against the royalists, and who has recently discovered his shamanic powers, has become the reluctant state coroner, a role he serves with humility and humour, along with Nurse Dtui his independent but faithful assistant, and honest and patient Mr Geung, a young man with Downs Syndrome who looks after the mortuary. Following the discovery of a mummified arm in a concrete path leading the President’s new house in Vieng Xiu, in the north-east of the country, where the revolutionary army had made their base in caves below the karst hills, Siri and Dtui journey north from Vientiane, the capital. Their task is to help Comrade Lit of the security division, who is charged with investigating the find and closing any case before a special concert to celebrate the signing of a treaty with Vietnam is held a few days time. Dr Siri soon determines that the man in the concrete was black, that the only men of that colour in the area were two Cuban nurses, and that the victim did not die a natural death. Local rumour is that the two Cuban nurses were exponents of Palo Mayombe, a form of black magic, and that they had used it to gain power over people including the beautiful young daughter of a Vietnamese colonel, hence why they had supposedly been sent home a few months earlier. Soon Dr Siri is investigating whether the man in the concrete is one of the nurses and how and why the victim became embedded in the path. In the meantime, Judge Haeng has taken the opportunity of Siri’s absence to transfer Mr Geung three hundred kilometres to the north. Mr Geung had promised Siri he would look after the mortuary, so slipping away from his abductors he starts to walk south, undertaking his own eventful adventure.

Disco for the Departed is the third book in the Dr Siri series, and the first I've read. It is described on its cover as having ‘comic charm’ and I wouldn’t disagree. Whilst I only laughed out loud a couple of times, I found myself often smiling along to the story and its understated and sly wit. In Siri, Dtui and Mr Geung, Cotterill has fashioned three well drawn characters which are not only very likeable but wholly believable, and the supporting cast were also well depicted. The story is well crafted and plotted, rich in detail and insights, and snakes and twists to a satisfying end. In particular, Cotterill does a good job of setting out the history and geography of Laos in the 1970s without this contextual material swamping or detracting from the story. It is also to his credit that I never once questioned Siri’s shaman abilities; instead I simply accepted it at face value that he could interact with the spirit world. All in all, Disco for the Departed was a very pleasant read and I look forward to reading more of Siri, Dtui and Mr Geung’s adventures.

A poor hunt turns good

Last Thursday I had to travel into Dublin for a meeting. Since my pre-order splurge has still not arrived I went armed with a list of 15 books I wanted to read and took the opportunity to quickly browse in Murder Ink, Hodges Figgis and Waterstones. I managed to find only two of those desired, but I did manage to come away with four others, so I did feel somewhat sated.

One thing that strikes me about these covers is that they're all quite different, but with perhaps the exception of the rather generic Frost at Christmas, they're also very good and strong designs. There does seem to be a trend at the minute to have quite generic covers with 'atmospheric' tinted photos that bears no relation to the story (for example, Graham Hurley's The Price of Darkness that I reviewed recently), so these are a welcome change.





I'll be posting a review of Queenpin tomorrow and looking forward to tucking into the others in the coming days (although I'm saving the Frost book until Christmas).