Not only is Colin Cotterill pushing a punny envelope with the title Six and a Half Deadly Sins (2015, Soho Crime), he is also even more fantastical than usual in this story. The difference between this and earlier entries in the delightful Dr. Siri series is that here the fantasy isn't grounded nearly as much in other-worldliness. Rather, it is just normal, of-this-world, crazy coincidences that sometimes feel stretched.
Not that there isn't, as always, much to like in a Dr. Siri mystery. The favorite characters are all back: Our Hero Laotian war hero and former national coroner now turned creaky retiree Siri Paiboun, his spirited but tragically-diminished-by-arthritis wife Daeng, and their sidekicks Civilai and Phosy. There is less Nurse Dtui and Mr. Geung this time around, and Teacher Ou makes just a cameo appearance. One thing to consider is how all of Cotterill's female characters are strong, interesting, and above all else, smart as can be. Even the evil ones. It's nice, and another reminder that however these books turn out, they can never ever be accused of having stock characters.
The writing is also as charming as always. An elder is described as a "ginseng root of a man" (75) and the combination of paranormal and rural Lao custom results in delightful dialogue such as this between Siri and a spiritual medium/weaver of pha sinh.
"'I make potions,' said Madam Voodoo. 'The ingredients come to me in dreams. Some say they help with minor spiritual problems. But you? You need a complete spiritual enema.'
'That sounds rather erotic. Would it help?'
'It might, but these things find a way to cancel each other out.'
'How do you mean?'
'Well, you might be cured of dipsomania, but you'd grow a tail. Do you know what I mean? You could be rid of a demon but lose the ability to speak your native language. That sort of thing.'" (140)
My favorite piece of humor here is the bit about the American doctors Bobby and Lola, from Physicians Eschewing Agendas. They are fully equipped and trained, but have nothing to do because the Lao government can't decide what kind of aid they really need, and they don't want to completely cut ties with a wealthy organization. So, the docs sit around making pancakes for the locals and drinking wine. Colin Cotterill, how do you really feel about Doctors Without Borders?
The plots of Dr. Siri mysteries are always complicated, but this one feels more so than usual. We start with Our Hero receiving a beautifully-made pha sinh with a gruesome little clue sewn inside. Never one to pass up a good hunt, and perhaps just a bit bored in retirement, Siri is immediately determined to figure out what it means. But to get started, Dr. S needs a travel permit for him and Daeng. There is a distracting chapter or so devoted to his cleaning up a mess of his nemesis Judge Haeng, so that the Judge will give him the permit.
Siri and Daeng travel around the north, collecting more pha sinh with clues in them, and having all sorts of adventures. Meanwhile, Inspector Phosy has been sent to "investigate" (read: close with no prejudice against our friends the Chinese) a pair of homicides near the Chinese border. It is pretty clear that these stories will intertwine at some point, but how? Who set up the elaborate pha sinh hunt? Who is the mysterious person out to get Dr. Siri in Vientiane? What does the Chinese connection have to do with anything?
While all of this is happening, friends of Dr. Siri's in Vientiane are getting sick, as are the good dr. and his wife, and the Chinese are invading Vietnam through northern Laos. And there is a lot of heroin floating around. Finally, will Siri ever learn to talk with the spirits lodging in him?
(The last one doesn't have as big a role as in past stories, probably good because as you can tell there is already a lot going on.)
To keep all of these possibly disparate tracks moving forward and eventually have them meet, Six and a Half Deadly Sins relies too heavily on the obvious and coincidence. Dr. Siri and Daeng need to travel around the north a bit but transportation is slow, unreliable, and hard to come by? How convenient that the docs happen to have a vintage Willys in perfect condition in their barn. They are running out of gas, and only government officials can get it? Why look, there is Civilai with his ministry-petrol coupons, hanging out at a gas station hundreds of miles from home, but conveniently where Siri and Daeng stop. Teacher Ou dies, leaving a volume on her desk conveniently open to a major clue. The whole sinh bit turns on the involvement of Madame Chanta, of the Women's Union, who also pops up again toward the end of the story when much is revealed and then explained in long conversations between the regular characters because there is no other way the reader could figure it out. And the illness? There is a story behind it, and it does factor in the ending, but it is wildly undeveloped unless I missed a chapter or something.
Of course I kept reading - there are various fates that, if you follow this series, you will want to know about - but I found myself laughing incredulously at times as some plot twist felt clearly to be an effort to get to the next stage, rather than a natural evolution of the story. How are these old people so charmed as to be able to get out of these difficult situations so often?
Well, there is the bit about Siri's carrier status, wherein he lives with the spirit of a Hmong shaman and hundreds of other dead people, many of whom have played roles in earlier stories. And the tricky twist at the end that may, or may not have something to do with this. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Overall, while I love this series, this one felt more disjointed than previous tales. You have the sense that Cotterill had several good ideas, none of which he felt could carry a story on its own, so he decided to toss them all together and then write his character's way out the bag.
Showing posts with label Dr. Siri Paiboun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr. Siri Paiboun. Show all posts
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Thursday, February 13, 2014
The Woman Who Wouldn't Die
This is not going to be a long review because Colin Cotteril's latest entry in the Dr. Siri series, The Woman Who Wouldn't Die (2013, Soho Crime) is almost as good as its predecessors, and I've already written enthusiastically about them.
The gang's all here, although they split up to follow a crazy government request that involves a senior ministerial official, his dead brother, and a mysterious medium who is somehow a woman who has been killed twice and now is able to communicate with the dead. Naturally, Siri, who has, how shall we say, an active spirit (and I don't mean spiritual) life, is intrigued, and hops on a slow boat up the Mekhong to learn more. Madame Daeng goes along for the ride, as does Mr. Geung, who works and lives in Daeng's noodle shop these days. Civilai shows up, entertainingly drunk as a skunk half the time, while Phosy and Dtui track down some other leads back in Vientiane and environs. The characters are as delightfully smart and funny as always, and the goodwill and care shown for each other is infectious. Despite the weird and at times tense story, you find yourself wanting to hang out with these jolly folk.
While the undead-woman plot line is interesting, it is not the one that really provides dramatic tension to the story. The title might also refer to Siri's wife Daeng, whose very interesting backstory we finally learn her here. You might have suspected a fair amount of what is revealed, but you wouldn't necessarily see this coming. Milhist buffs, there's a neat twist toward the end, concerning the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. True? Who knows, but maybe.
All of this said, the split plot here mutes the dramatic tension a bit. The resolution of that whole medium business is pretty fantastical, and I was disappointed that we didn't learn of Siri's reaction to the late unveiling of a particular character's dishonesty - that plot line felt incomplete. And while Daeng's story is vivid, it didn't have the same impact as the profound horror of Siri's experiences in Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, which I think has been the pinnacle of this series.
Still, it is a pleasure on a dreary winter day in New England to read a passage like this:
"Some twenty elephants on the far bank were knee-deep in the river, providing hosing services to one another. They'd been there since Siri first arrived, their mahout drowsing beneath a Laundry-Fruit tree with no particular hurry to move on." (196) I don't know what a Laundry-Fruit tree is, but I would like to be drowsing under one now.
The gang's all here, although they split up to follow a crazy government request that involves a senior ministerial official, his dead brother, and a mysterious medium who is somehow a woman who has been killed twice and now is able to communicate with the dead. Naturally, Siri, who has, how shall we say, an active spirit (and I don't mean spiritual) life, is intrigued, and hops on a slow boat up the Mekhong to learn more. Madame Daeng goes along for the ride, as does Mr. Geung, who works and lives in Daeng's noodle shop these days. Civilai shows up, entertainingly drunk as a skunk half the time, while Phosy and Dtui track down some other leads back in Vientiane and environs. The characters are as delightfully smart and funny as always, and the goodwill and care shown for each other is infectious. Despite the weird and at times tense story, you find yourself wanting to hang out with these jolly folk.
While the undead-woman plot line is interesting, it is not the one that really provides dramatic tension to the story. The title might also refer to Siri's wife Daeng, whose very interesting backstory we finally learn her here. You might have suspected a fair amount of what is revealed, but you wouldn't necessarily see this coming. Milhist buffs, there's a neat twist toward the end, concerning the French debacle at Dien Bien Phu. True? Who knows, but maybe.
All of this said, the split plot here mutes the dramatic tension a bit. The resolution of that whole medium business is pretty fantastical, and I was disappointed that we didn't learn of Siri's reaction to the late unveiling of a particular character's dishonesty - that plot line felt incomplete. And while Daeng's story is vivid, it didn't have the same impact as the profound horror of Siri's experiences in Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, which I think has been the pinnacle of this series.
Still, it is a pleasure on a dreary winter day in New England to read a passage like this:
"Some twenty elephants on the far bank were knee-deep in the river, providing hosing services to one another. They'd been there since Siri first arrived, their mahout drowsing beneath a Laundry-Fruit tree with no particular hurry to move on." (196) I don't know what a Laundry-Fruit tree is, but I would like to be drowsing under one now.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Slash and Burn
Even with a trippy opening scene of a stoned helicopter pilot crashing in the jungles of Laos, I still have a little tingle of delight every time I start a Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery. It is a hopeful tingle, too, since I don't really know what is going to happen in this one and who knows, maybe it won't live up to its predecessors in this marvelously original series.
Happily, Slash and Burn (2011, Soho Press) is a fine extension of the Dr. Siri brand, so no worries there. Although you have to wonder how much longer Colin Cotterill's aging communist and reluctant coroner but still game amateur detective can stay in the hunt. And you also have to wonder how many more plot lines Cotterill can come up with that will accommodate Dr. Siri's delightful but growing group of crazy-like-a-fox comrades-in-arms. Because the gang is all here in Slash and Burn, and they meet up with a bunch of similarly eccentric Americans in the search for the remains of the aforementioned pilot, or perhaps even the pilot himself.
The premise is really that simple: an American team needs a Laotian counterpart in order to search in the hills of north Laos - where conflict is still live between the Pathet Lao and rebel Hmong - for the remains of the downed craft and its pilot. It is apparent almost immediately to Our Hero that the US mission is murkier than its apparently clear objective, and that's where the plot thickens. Cotterill piles on the atmosphere in a slightly heavy-handed fashion, with an awful lot of actual smoke literally and figuratively obscuring things, the apparent result of an annual local agricultural technique designed to clear space for planting. The resolution is a bit more dramatic than maybe might happen in reality (OK, it is a novel), but Cotterill is clearly working from a non-American, one might even say anti-American point of view here. There are a couple of good Yanks on the US team, or at least some thoughtful ones, but for the most part they all harbor nefarious intentions. The story is not entirely anti-US, but you know, we're not ALL bad, and one feels that it casts a fairly negative light on even domestic US politics, not to mention US policu in SE Asia. Of course, this would have been the prevailing opinion in the region in 1978 so maybe I should stop being so sensitive.
Slash and Burn does depart from the Dr. Siri norm in a pretty big way, which is that his spiritual connections do not play a major role in this story. There is one episode where he departs from reality, and it is only vaguely explained later, so one wonders if Cotterill had perhaps been trying out an entirely different plot thread there, but abandoned it later without developing or completely excising it. And the spirits do play a key role in the denouement. But perhaps the mortal team - which now includes Siri, Madame Daeng, Civilai, Dtui, Phosy, Geung, Comrade Lit, Auntie Bpoo, very reluctantly Judge Haeng, and now a dog named Ugly - is just too big and unwieldy to allow for any spirits to tag along as well. This series should be read in order of publication, to get the full story on each of these charming additions to Dr. Siri's circle.
But as kookily effective as his human pals are, how long can Siri count on his spirit allies and shamanic expertise to save the day? One of these missions they are going to come calling for him to join them permanently, and then I guess things could get really weird if Cotterill tries to continue this series from Siri's grave.
Happily, Slash and Burn (2011, Soho Press) is a fine extension of the Dr. Siri brand, so no worries there. Although you have to wonder how much longer Colin Cotterill's aging communist and reluctant coroner but still game amateur detective can stay in the hunt. And you also have to wonder how many more plot lines Cotterill can come up with that will accommodate Dr. Siri's delightful but growing group of crazy-like-a-fox comrades-in-arms. Because the gang is all here in Slash and Burn, and they meet up with a bunch of similarly eccentric Americans in the search for the remains of the aforementioned pilot, or perhaps even the pilot himself.
The premise is really that simple: an American team needs a Laotian counterpart in order to search in the hills of north Laos - where conflict is still live between the Pathet Lao and rebel Hmong - for the remains of the downed craft and its pilot. It is apparent almost immediately to Our Hero that the US mission is murkier than its apparently clear objective, and that's where the plot thickens. Cotterill piles on the atmosphere in a slightly heavy-handed fashion, with an awful lot of actual smoke literally and figuratively obscuring things, the apparent result of an annual local agricultural technique designed to clear space for planting. The resolution is a bit more dramatic than maybe might happen in reality (OK, it is a novel), but Cotterill is clearly working from a non-American, one might even say anti-American point of view here. There are a couple of good Yanks on the US team, or at least some thoughtful ones, but for the most part they all harbor nefarious intentions. The story is not entirely anti-US, but you know, we're not ALL bad, and one feels that it casts a fairly negative light on even domestic US politics, not to mention US policu in SE Asia. Of course, this would have been the prevailing opinion in the region in 1978 so maybe I should stop being so sensitive.
Slash and Burn does depart from the Dr. Siri norm in a pretty big way, which is that his spiritual connections do not play a major role in this story. There is one episode where he departs from reality, and it is only vaguely explained later, so one wonders if Cotterill had perhaps been trying out an entirely different plot thread there, but abandoned it later without developing or completely excising it. And the spirits do play a key role in the denouement. But perhaps the mortal team - which now includes Siri, Madame Daeng, Civilai, Dtui, Phosy, Geung, Comrade Lit, Auntie Bpoo, very reluctantly Judge Haeng, and now a dog named Ugly - is just too big and unwieldy to allow for any spirits to tag along as well. This series should be read in order of publication, to get the full story on each of these charming additions to Dr. Siri's circle.
But as kookily effective as his human pals are, how long can Siri count on his spirit allies and shamanic expertise to save the day? One of these missions they are going to come calling for him to join them permanently, and then I guess things could get really weird if Cotterill tries to continue this series from Siri's grave.
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