The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill

The year is 1976, the place Laos and Dr Siri Paiboun is the only coroner in the country. He was looking forward to an easy retirement in Vientianne, after "reassembling broken soldiers and avoiding bombs" in the jungles of Laos and Vietnam for 35 years but the Lao People's Revolutionary Party have other ideas.

"We've decided to make you the Republic's chief police coroner" He looked into Siri's green eyes for a hint of pride, but only saw bewilderment. He might as well have told him he was to be the Republic's new balloon bender or unicyclist"
"I've never done an autopsy in my life"
"Ah. Its all the same. Putting them together; taking them apart"

He inherits a team of two, Nurse Dtui and mortuary assistant Mr Geung and settles into a routine, until Comrade Kham's wife dies unexpectedly. Cause of death is elusive, have her tablets been spiked with poison? Khan wants her cremated as soon as possible, and the body is taken out of the morgue. Dr Siri goes in search of answers and finds he is enjoying the investigation and the "cloak and daggery" of it all. But this is just the start, tortured Vietnamese bodies bob up to the surface in a lake, mysterious deaths occur in the provinces.

"Whats happening to this job? For nine months we plod along nicely: a couple of old ladies, the odd electric shock and a bicycle fatality. No murders, mysteries, or mayhem. Then, all of a sudden, the body business explodes like an atomic bomb."

Someone does not want any of these mysteries to be solved, reports disappear, investigations are hampered. But Siri Paiboun has another resource, he sees the dead in his dreams which encourages him to "show respect to cadavers, once he knew the former owners would be back", and maybe they will give hims some clues to find answers, but his main resource will be his scientific mind and resourcefulness.

The historical setting as the communist government overthrows the royal family and takes charge, the shortages of every type of equipment, the power struggles and beginnings of corruption, together with the uneasy relationships with Vietnam and the politics make this interesting but unfamiliar territory for a crime novel.

The book has a real sense of place and community in urban Vientianne and to a lesser extent the border territory of Kumsing, where Dr Siri will find more than he bargained for.

There is an interesting cast of characters and as this book is the first in a series I would hope that this element would be developed further. Dr Siri is a charismatic figure and we learn more about him throughout the book.

An entertaining book with dry wit which could be described as a cozy crime, apart from the body dissections, prophetic dreams and a hint of shamanism. I am certainly going to search out the next in the series 'Thirty-Three Teeth'.

Verdict: Rattling Yarn

Colin Cotterill lives in Thailand and his website contains both his writing and cartooning skills. Another interesting project he is involved with is the blog of the International Crime Authors , a collection of writers whose detectives ply their skills in Turkey, Thailand, Palestine and of course Laos.

Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand by Fred Vargas

Murders from 1943 to 2003 that all have murder wounds in common, three punctures like a trident. Commissair Jean Baptiste Adamsberg thinks it is the same killer, Judge Fulgence, but he has been dead for over 15 years. Whoever he tries to convince tells him to stop wasting their time. Each murder has been solved and someone has been convicted, despite the accused not remembering anything. Commissaire Adamsberg has a personal interest - his brother's girlfriend was killed, and his brother would have been convicted, if Adamsberg had not got rid of some of the evidence.

The first few chapters are rather contrived, as Vargas sets up the characters and a fresh murder, but once we fly from Paris and arrive in Canada the plot and prose start to flow. Before long Adamsburg is on the run, accused of a murder with three puncture wounds! He cannot bear to think he has committed this crime, but there are hours he cannot remember after a drinking binge, and he found blood on his hands. The key is to return to France and solve the murder of The Trident.

Commissair Adamsberg is a detective who relies on intuition and imagination whereas his subordinate, and friend, Captaine Danglard is intellectual and logical. A nice yin/yang balance in a detective novel. As a man on the run he is help in his quest by a handful of people and a different type of computer hacker.

Vargas's characterisation of the main and secondary characters is deft and she can capture the essence of a place in a few sentences. An enjoyable, lyrical and page turning read, admirably translated by Sian Reynolds. I look forward to reading more Vargas. Apparently this is number five in the Adamsberg series but the first I have read.

Additional Info

The book won the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award.

The French title is 'Sous Les Vents De Neptune' (Under Neptune's Winds) and the origin of the English title is from Macbeth "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood from my hands". Love whoever came up with that.

The book has recently been made into a film "Sous Les Vents De Neptune" which I think is a made for TV movie. It has an interesting cast...

Sous le vent de Neptune
by telecablesat

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Kate Atkinson

'When Will There Be Good News' by Kate Atkinson

Quotes from the Book:- "A coincidence is just an explanation just waiting to happen" Jackson Brodie
"The best days of her life had been when she was pregnant and the baby was still safe inside her. Once you were out in the world, then the rain fell on your face and the wind lifted your hair and the sun beat down on you and the path stretched ahead of you and evil walked on it" Joanna Hunter

'When Will There Be Good News' opens with a slaying of a family by a stranger but the 6 year old Joanna runs and hides in the long grass. This section is marked 'In the Past'

We then move to 'Today' which is 30 years later and now Joanna is a GP in Edinburgh with a baby and married to Neil , a businessman who may be a bit dodgy. Her nanny is a precocious 16 year old called Reggie whose mother has drowned on holiday.

Other characters are introduced, Jackson Brodie, an ex army and police, currently a private detective, is in Yorkshire stealing hair from a boy who may be his son. DCI Louise Monroe, who is not sure where her own life is going, is about to alert Dr Hunter that her family's murdered has been released from prison.

Reaching one of the sections marked 'Tomorrow' (and there is more than one):

Suddenly Joanne Hunter disappears but DCI Munroe does not believe Reggie when she says something is wrong and has not, as Neil Hunter says, gone to visit her sick aunt. Brodie meanwhile is boarding a train he thinks is going to London, but he is wrong and it is heading in the opposite direction, to Edinburgh but he will not quite make it to the station as the train crashes.

Our protagonists are hurtling towards each other and now everybody believes that Joanna is missing. The plot gallops away taking more twists and turns to its eventual end.

This is a beautifully constructed novel, as you would expect from the author of 'Behind the Scenes of the Museum', although of a very different genre, but still full of dry wit, full drawn characters and a pacey plot.

Verdict: Rattling Good Read

Kate Atkinson's website here