Curse of the Pogo Stick (Dr. Siri Paiboun Series #5) »

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.

A pogo stick brings a curse down upon a Hmong village.

Publishers Weekly

In the engaging fifth entry in Cotterill's unusual crime series set in 1970s Laos (after 2007's Anarchy and Old Dogs), members of the Hmong tribe, an oppressed minority, spirit away coroner Siri Paiboun, for whom marriage looms, to aid in an exorcism revolving around the titular pogo stick. Cotterill sympathetically depicts the Hmong's plight, striking a good balance between comedy and seriousness. The autopsy and investigation into the death of an unknown soldier booby-trapped with a grenade add intrigue. Readers will welcome such familiar characters as Madame Daeng, lab assistant Mr. Gueng and Nurse Dtui, though their perspectives tend to distract from Dr. Siri's predicament. The time spent with the Hmong, not the attendant mysteries, provides the most satisfaction. (Aug.)

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Prologue     ix
The Stiff     1
How to Blow up a Coroner     13
A Fate Worse than Death     23
Exposed Nurses     41
Shots from the Grassy Knoll     53
A Mugging in the Otherworld     65
Cashews Make Me Fart     73
Eat, Drink, and Be Unfaithful     83
Friendly Fire and Brimstone     97
Nonpracticing Atheists     111
Betrothed to a Devil     125
The Shaman's Maiden Flight     135
Siri Confronts His Demon     159
A Moment Frozen in Cotton     179
Quiet as the Morgue     189
The Russian Club     201
Indignationhood     215
Wedlocked     227
Coitus Interruptus     237