Win Colin Cotterill's new book

Colin Cotterill, author of the Dr. Siri  Paiboun mysteries about the aging chief (and only) coroner in post-revoltionary Laos and his odd cast of helpers, has begun a new series about an eccentric family in Thailand.

The series opens thus: "Old Mel hired one of Da's nephews — the slow-witted one with the dent in his forehead — to sink a well in his back acre."

That's typical Cotterill in form and substance, and if you shudder a politically correct shudder at slow-witted, don't. Cotterill is the most human, compassionate and generous of authors in his depictions of the elderly and of a character with Down syndrome in his Dr. Siri books. I'm confident he won't make cruel or gratuitous fun of anyone here.

But why trust me? One lucky reader in the U.S. only can win a copy of the book, Killed at the Whim of a Hat, courtesy of the good people at Minotaur Books, and judge for her or himself.  All you have to do is answer the following skill-testing question.

Cotterill's novel The Coroner's Lunch tells us a bit about Dr. Siri's reading habits:

"During his stay in Paris decades before, he'd taken his delight in the weekly serializations of one Monsieur Sim in the l'Oeuvre newspaper ... Siri had been able to solve most of the mysteries long before the inspector had a handle on them."

Who is Monsieur Sim?

===============

   Liz from Maryland knew that "Monsieur Sim" was Georges Simenon. He used the alias early in his career, and Liz wins a copy of Killed at the Whim of a Hat. Congratulations, and thanks to Liz and to Minotaur Books. 

===============

 (Read Colin Cotterill's blog for information about his books and samples of his cartoons. Watch an entertaining interview with Cotterill here, and read my previous posts about Cotterill; just click the link, and scroll down,)

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

A new blog about international crime fiction from folks who write the stuff

It's International Crime Authors Reality Check, a cooperative effort from Christopher G. Moore, Colin Cotterill, Matt Beynon Reese and Barbara Nadel, each of whom plans one post a week.

The opening lineup includes How the Devil Lost its Vagina from Cotterill, Quick, woman, go and get the Koran! from Rees, The Elements of Crime Fiction in Foreign Settings from Moore, and a modest greeting from Nadel.

The site also includes short biographies, information about the authors' books, and news links. I've written about three of the authors here on Detectives Beyond Borders, most recently about Cotterill's Curse of the Pogo Stick last week, and I'll look forward to adding Nadel to the list.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

More on Colin Cotterill's spirits

Colin Cotterill is the supernaturalist's answer to readers who don't like the supernatural in their crime stories. Here's a bit more from Curse of the Pogo Stick, fifth novel in Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboun of Vientiane, Laos:

"These small bamboo structures were miniature reconstructions of actual bridges but in this case they had no water to cross. They traditionally offered a shortcut for lost souls to return to their host. One was customary. Four suggested a hell of a lot of souls had gone missing from this particular house."

"A hell of a lot of souls" is wonderful, resonant, funny and unexpected. It nicely captures the simultaneous irreverence and respect with which Cotterill portrays the worlds of the supernatural and of those who believe in it. Dr. Siri is both a scientist – the chief and only coroner in post-Communist-revolution Laos – and a shaman, an unwilling conduit to the spirit world. Does he believe in the spirits with which he comes into contact and which sometimes help him solve mysteries? He has no choice:

"My biggest problem as a practicing cynic, however, is that I'm aligned, against my will and better judgment, to another world. ... I don't know how it's possible, but damn it, it's there. So I resort to the rules of the supernatural. I begin by seeing whether the incredible can be explained through their rules. And when that world tells me something is off-kilter and implausible, I know I have to think as a human. I have to use logic. My visit to the Otherwold told me I had to look for earthly solutions to this mystery."

That's one of the nicer accounts by a fictional detective of his own methods. Among the books' achievements, in addition to their engaging, sympathetic characters, their compassion, and their jabs at Communist bureaucracy, is that they invite respectful consideration, without dogma, mumbo-jumbo or embarrassment and with good humor, of the spiritual world and its role in human lives.

=======================

The illustration of Curse of the Pogo Stick's UK cover comes from the author's own Web site, one of the cleverer and more amusing of its kind. Take a look.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

Colin Cotterill has fun with the spirits

In previous books Colin Cotterill invoked the recent history and the spiritual traditions of Laos. In the early pages of Curse of the Pogo Stick, he has similar respectful fun with ancient history and spirits.

After narrating how the Hmong people lost their earliest written records, Cotterill offers this:

"The spirit of the first-ever Hmong shaman, See Yee, looked up from the Otherworld and was mightily pissed that his people could be so careless."

Good fun, I'd say though, on the evidence of my previous reading of Cotterill, not at all out of character.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

One more post about “Thirty-Three Teeth”

A few months ago, I invoked D.H. Lawrence’s poem “A Sane Revolution” when posting about Colin Cotterill's novel Anarchy and Old Dogs. The poem begins "If you make a revolution, make it for fun," and I thought it captured nicely the political attitudes of Cotterill and his protagonst, Dr. Siri Paiboun.

Now I'm reading Cotterill's Thirty-Three Teeth, and I thought of Lawrence's poem once more when I came to the following:

"Haeng ... let loose with one of his renowned maxims.

"`That's the spirit, Siri. It's moments like this that make the socialist system so great. When the call to arms comes the committed cadre, even on his honeymoon, would gladly climb off his young wife at the crucial moment sooner than let down the party.'

"If that were so, Siri thought to himself, it might explain the frustrated look he'd often seen on the faces of so many Party members."

If there's a better writer of gently humorous, satirically tinged, politically edged, occasionally spiritual, exotically set crime novels than Colin Cotterill, I can't think of who it might be.

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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Ladies and gentlemen, meet your protagonist

Colin Cotterill’s novel Thirty-Three Teeth gives its hero a deliciously unheroic entrance:

“On his way to the back, [Civilai] passed a small room where piles of clothes told him he was nearing a primitive life form. In the back yard, he discovered it. Dr. Siri Paiboun, reluctant national coroner, confused psychic, disheartened communist, swung gently on a hammock strung between two jackfruit saplings. A larger man would have brought them both down.”

That beautiful little piece of writing ought to make any reader smile. It’s also wonderfully efficient, telling us everything we need to know about Dr. Siri’s profession, his attitudes, his mental state, and even his size.

And now, readers, how about you? What are your favorite first glimpses of an important character in crime fiction? What does the author do in just a few words to make you feel you know well a character you may never have met before?

© Peter Rozovsky 2008

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If you make a revolution, make it for fun

There’s plenty of humor in The Coroner’s Lunch, Colin Cotterill’s first novel about Dr. Siri Paiboun, sole coroner in Laos. Some of the broadest jokes are at the expense of communist officials and functionaries. There’s plenty of humor in the fourth Siri novel, Anarchy and Old Dogs, as well, but the humor is directed more at politics than politicians and thus dugs deeper.

Some examples:

In this idealistic state, Civilai had chosen to ignore that absence in Laos of one of the fundamental components for a successful communist revolution. There was no rebellious Lao proletariat. There were no factories in which to organize unions, and hardly any working class. ... But by the time the two young men arrived back in Asia in 1929, the seeds of revolt had been planted in their fertile minds. Communism would save their repressed countrymen whether they liked it or not.

and

Haeng held out the book.

“What is it?”

“It’s Chairman Mao’s `Little Red Book.’ We’ve had it translated into Lao.”

“What on earth for?”

and

“A good socialist is not a dustbin, with a closed lid. He is a letter box, always open to receive news.”

“Well, that explains everything. I’ll do my best to keep my slot open.”

That’s all delightful, I think, and it edges Anarchy and Old Dogs closer to satire than the earlier book.

What other crime fiction does this? What other crime writers are satirical, aiming at serious targets, while retaining their sense of humor?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Disjointed (me, not Colin Cotterill’s book)

I’m reading three or four or five books, including non-crime, so posting may be less cohesive than unusual the next few days. Feel free to respond coherently if you’d like to, though.

First, I may have to retract some of the spleen I vented this week at self-reference in crime fiction. The cause is an exchange from Colin Cotterill’s Anarchy and Old Dogs that includes the following:

“`Very well. In that case, I suspect what we have here is a message written in invisible ink.’

“Phosy raised one eyebrow. `And how would an old bush surgeon know a thing like that?’

“`Inspector Phosy, allow me to reintroduce you to Inspector Maigret of the Palais de Justice. I became very involved in a number of his cases as they were outlined in the pages of l’Oeuvre while I was in France. Unlike ourselves, Inspector Maigret has the very good sense to be fictional, and thus can dispense with such human annoyances as inefficiency and budget restraints… ’

“`I’m impressed. And all this time I thought there was nothing positive to be gained from reading mysteries.’

“`You’d be surprised.’”

Why does it work? The exchange is almost a full page long, which helps. The conversation is believable, and it’s allowed to develop, as a real conversation would; why shouldn’t two colleagues chat about mysteries?

Further, I suspect that many readers are complicit in the sentiment that Cotterill’s Dr. Siri expresses. We indulge his gentle acknowledgment that Maigret is not quite real because it accounts for our love of Maigret. (And that in itself is nice work on Cotterill’s part. Attempts to explain author Georges Simenon’s fantastic popularity are generally far weightier than Cotterill’s sensible observation.)

Third, the exchange is nicely paced, a gentle comedy sketch in miniature, a little story, and not a string of annoyingly self-referential quips.

Fourth, some of the lines are funny – gently so, of course.

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I hinted strongly at incoherence, so here's a non-crime-fiction note: In a possible first in its years-long history, the comic strip Sally Forth was mildly amusing yesterday.

End of note.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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The Coroner's Lunch

I recently finished this novel, about which I had posted earlier here and here. The book, first in Colin Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboun, sole coroner in Laos, was a little cozier than I'd have liked. This was a surprise in a story that involves international politics and deaths possibly caused by torture. And supernatural elements are involved, though Cotterill manages to make them interesting.

Such elements play a greater role in the novel than do the politics. This is surprising, too, since the plot involves killings that could escalate into an international incident between Laos and Vietnam. I don't know; I just don't associate spirits and dreams with high-level diplomacy. Still, I'll likely read other novels in the series because Siri is such an appealing protagonist. He's smart, he improvises under circumstances of deprivation, he has compassion for his colleagues, and he's impatient with impediments to his work.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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And one more thing ...

When I posted about tributes from one crime-fiction author to another, I forgot this example, from Colin Cotterill's The Coroner's Lunch, which I was reading at the time:

"During his stay in Paris decades before, he'd taken his delight in the weekly serializations of one Monsieur Sim in the l'Oeuvre newspaper ... Siri had been able to solve most of the mysteries long before the inspector had a handle on them."

And, recalls Cotterill's protagonist, the proud Siri Paiboun, he solved the crimes without the benefit of the inspector's pipe. Back in Laos, Siri is delighted to find that Monsieur Sim now writes under his full name of Georges Simenon and that his books have filtered from Vietnam into Laos.

Cotterill thus offers a more elaborate tribute than most, spinning it out into an anecdote and giving his readers not just the information that Siri (and, presumably, Cotterill, too) reads Simenon's Maigret stories, but the historical nugget that Simenon once wrote under the name of Sim, and a plausible example of his phenomenal worldwide popularity.

All this gives me the opportunity to ask you another question, dear readers. How do you feel about such references and tributes? Do they add to the story's interest? One the one hand, if you and I read detective stories, there is no reason why a fictional detective should not do the same thing. On the other, this can serve as a mischievous (or intrusive) reminder that when you read a story, you are not entering a real world, you are just reading a story.

OK, I'm done being ponderous. Now it's your turn. Do your favorite fictional detectives read detective stories? How do you feel about this?

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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Revelations about revolutions (Taibo, Marcos, Colin Cotterill)

I've found a few surprises in the opening pages of The Uncomfortable Dead and The Coroner's Lunch. The former is a product of an unusual collaboration, between Paco Ignacio Taibo II, author of the Héctor Belascoarán Shayne crime novels, and Subcomandante Marcos, spokesman for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico. The latter is the first in Collin Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboun, an accidental hero who solves crimes as the only coroner in Laos after the Communist takeover.

First, the Taibo/Marcos: The two authors purportedly wrote alternate chapters, Marcos the odd-numbered ones, Taibo the even. That would give Marcos the opening chapter, and the revolutionary spokesman/leader pulls it off with a flash of humor here and there – a pleasant surprise to this thorough-going son of the bourgeoisie. He also invokes Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and his protagonist Pepe Carvalho. That's another pleasant surprise and an argument for Vázquez Montalbán as a late entrant in the Most influential crime writer sweepstakes. In addition to the Marcos/Taibo tribute, after all, Andrea Camilleri named his protagonist, Salvo Montalbano, in Vázquez Montalbán's honor.

Colin Cotterill has spent much of his life traveling and teaching, for several years in Laos, scene of the Siri Paiboun series. That gives his books a kind of knowledgeable outsider's perspective, something like Michael Dibdin's in the Aurelio Zen novels. (Dibdin was also a teacher.) In one small example, Siri

"passed government women at the end of their day jobs. They wore khaki blouses and traditional black phasin that hung stiffly to their ankles. Each managed to make her uniform unique in some way: a brooch, a different collar, a fold in the skirt that was their own."

On the one hand, that's not an observation a Laotian would likely make, which raises the vexed question of what happens when an author sets a novel in a country other than his or her own. On the other hand, an attentive visitor would likely make such an observation, which establishes a bond between reader and author and – who knows? – may stir readers' interest in visiting Laos.

More (and this time I mean it) on Siri Paiboun later.

NB: The Uncomfortable Dead has been nominated for a 2007 Shamus Award in the Best Paperback Original category. (Hat tip to the Mystery File blog.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

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