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Curse of the Pogo Stick (Dr. Siri Paiboun)

Curse of the Pogo Stick (Dr. Siri Paiboun)
Average Customer Rating: Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5Average rating of 4.0/5

List Price: $24.00
Asia Trips Trips Price: $17.52
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Manufacturer: Soho Crime

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781569474853
ISBN: 1569474850
Label: Soho Crime
Manufacturer: Soho Crime
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2008-07-01
Publisher: Soho Crime
Studio: Soho Crime

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Editorial Reviews:

“In the Curse of the Pogo Stick. . . . [Colin] Cotterill achieves a new and compelling sophistication.”—John Burdett

Praise for the Dr. Siri Paiboun Series:

“Wonderfully fresh and exotic.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Tragically funny and magically sublime.”—Entertainment Weekly

“A crack storyteller and an impressive guide to a little-known culture.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Delightful.”—Booklist (starred)

“This witty and unusual series just keeps getting better.”—Publishers Weekly

In Vientiane, a booby-trapped corpse, intended for Dr. Siri, the national coroner of Laos, has been delivered to the morgue. In his absence, only Nurse Dtui’s intervention saves the lives of the morgue attendants, visiting doctors, and Madame Daeng, Dr. Siri’s fiancée.

On his way back from a communist party meeting in the north, Dr. Siri is kidnapped by seven female Hmong villagers under the direction of the village elder so that he will—in the guise of Yeh Ming, the thousand-year-old shaman with whom he shares his body—exorcise the headman’s daughter whose soul is possessed by a demon, and lift the curse of the pogo stick.

Colin Cotterill is the author of The Coroner’s Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, Disco for the Departed, and Anarchy and Old Dogs, featuring seventy-three-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun, national coroner of Laos. He and his wife live in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he teaches at the university.

For more information, visit www.colincotterill.com 




Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Paradise Lost
Comment: Cheers to the talented Colin Cotterill who, like his wily septuagenarian protagonist Dr. Siri Paiboun, gets deeper and savvier with each new installment of this refreshingly unique crime mystery series. In this outing, Cotterill splits his plot, leaving sidekick nurse Dtui and her new policeman husband, Phosy, with Mr. Gueng tagging along, to crack the case of a booby-trapped corpse, while a Hmong tribe in northern Laos waylays Laotian national coroner Siri and his insufferable boss.

Consistent with its predecessors, Cotterill's characters are thoughtfully rendered - this is a guy who has great love and respect for the people he captures so well on paper. His prose is light and easy to read - we're not talking heavy atmospherics or deep psychological drama here - and despite the macabre and gruesome nature of a day in the morgue, the author does not rely on excess violence or gore to substitute for story or setting. With a keen dry wit reflected through Siri, Cotterill's skewering of communism and its incompetent practitioners becomes rapier-sharp, yet plot is never overshadowed by the politics. The mysterious Hmongs, who've dropped in and out of the fringes of previous books in the series, play a pivotal role here (including the background of the bizarre title), lending additional cultural depth and poignancy while opening old Viet Nam-era war wounds. The parallel stories come together with an unusual a very Cotterill-like humorous twist, laying the groundwork for the next entry.

While Colin Cotterill is not the in-your-face, hip, brash and brutal contemporary crime lyricists in the vein of Charlie Huston, Duane Swierczynski, or Ken Bruen, he is nonetheless a maverick in his own right - a sensitive and creative writer who values intelligent plotting and carefully drawn casts, choosing a unique time and unusual setting to practice his magic. Here is an author that deserves much more exposure - do yourself a favor and get acquainted.


Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Colin Cotterill's series is great!
Comment: Colin Cotterill's series is just great! His characters are well-drawn and he gives you a plot, a bit of comedy, a bit of romance and a sense of what it is like to live in an Asian country recovering from war and poor leaders.

Customer Rating: Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5Average rating of 4/5
Summary: Satisfying entry in a splendid series
Comment: If you like exotic locales, sympathetic characters and ingenious mysteries, you must meet Dr. Siri Paiboun. I would suggest going back to the first book (I think this is #4 or #5.) I have greatly enjoyed them all. This one is not the best, the ending is too neatly and mechanically tied up, there is a little "series fatigue" in the plotting. The chapters that dealt with the Khmer people were I thought greatly engaging. This is one of the few books or series in a non-fantasy genre that can mix in a little of the supernatural without distorting the story line. Above all, there is humor and a matter-of-factness about life and death that leaves you, as most mystery fiction does not, feeling good about the world.

Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: Another fantastic read
Comment: I am a huge fan of Dr. Siri and this latest installment did not disppoint in any way. Excellent read and I am looking forward to the next volume!

Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
Summary: solid historical Laos mystery
Comment: In the late 1970s the Laotian National Coroner seventy-three years old Dr. Siri Paiboun is attending some governmental Communist Party function (waste of time if you ask him) in the north. Meanwhile back in the capital Vientiane a corpse of a soldier booby trapped with grenades is anonymously dropped off at the morgue. Only the fast and capable work of Paibourn's assistant Nurse Dtui avoids a tragedy from happening.

Meanwhile Paibourn looks forward to getting home to spend time with his fiancée Madame Daeng and even time in the morgue, which is better than attending these inane officious official officialdoms. Instead the female members of the Hmong tribe abduct Dr. Siri as they need his help; or at least of the millennium old shaman Yeh Ming is to perform an exorcism on the tribal chief's daughter demonically possessed due to an evil pogo stick placed on an alter.

CURSE OF THE POGO STICK is a solid historical mystery that contains two subplots, in which both contain humor inside serious situations that brings to life 1977-78 Laos. The Vientiane investigation is superbly written as Nurse Dtui cleverly leads the inquiry into who would use a dead soldier to kills others. However, Colin Cotterill's insight into the suppressed Hmong people, caught between the violent Communist regime and Nixon's just completed a few years ago secret war, is what makes this a great entry as neither side cares what happened to these expendable mountain pawns. The insight into the Hmong culture and their "collateral damage" plight supersede the whodunit.

Harriet Klausner



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