Dr. Siri und seine Toten

The premise is pretty darn cool: A 70-something doctor in Laos is forcibly made into the national coroner when it is revealed that the communist revolution doesn't believe in retirement. The undertone: he's old and probably infirm and the party will be able to control him. The reality: he's spunky and thoughtful and decides that if he's going to be thrust into a three-quarter-life crisis, he may as well embrace it. He's read a few mystery novels himself, and he decides: what the heck, I'm going to solve mysteries!

And solve mysteries he does, aided by Geung, his assistant with Down syndrome and a near-eidetic memory (one of the best literary depiction of trisomy 21 I've ever seen, by the way) and Dtui, his nurse, who bribes him into letting her be the assistant coroner. And a fairly large cast of eccentric, but not over-the-top wacky characters who really help flesh out the life of post-communist revolution Laos. And certainly, the setting is the main draw here: the politics/politicking of the recently formed communist power, the rich culture of Laos, the tensions among Southeast Asian nations in the late 70's – both critical to the plot, but more importantly critical to the feel of the book.

What I certainly didn't expect (and the back of the book doesn't tell you) is that Dr. Siri is also heavily aided by the mystical: visions of the dead, messages from the dead, prophetic dreams, being the embodiment of a resurrected Hmong spirit figure such that he is able to speak fluent Hmong when the plot calls for it and many other examples. I've never been a big fan of magical realism, and it's particularly jarring here as the book was billed as “Holmesian sleuthing.” Yes, there is deduction, but almost every case is solved by a major clue from the magical realm.

The weakest part of the book to me is the pacing: there are at least three major mysteries (three dead Vietnamese men, the natural? death of a party bigwig's wife and the suicide? of said bigwig's girlfriend, and the deaths of four soldiers out near the Hmong village.) These three do not intertwine in any way except temporally, often interrupting the plotlines of each other.

This is a fun, light read; definitely recommended for anyone looking to learn more about Laos, but light on the mystery.