By Colin Cotterill
Text Publishing, NZ$37 | Reviewed by Amy Brown

IF YOU’VE read Cotterill’s first book, The Coroner’s Lunch, you may be pleased to hear that Thirty-Three Teeth is the sequel, and that it looks like Cotterill is far from finished with his unique protagonist, Siri Paiboun. If this is all new to you, Thailand-based Australian, Cotterill has created what some critics are calling the South East Asian answer to Agatha Christie’s Poirot. Siri Paiboun, a septuagenarian, forensic surgeon is not just Laos’ national coroner, but also a sprightly psychic. So, when a suspicious body ends up on the table in his morgue, he is well-equipped to solve the mystery.

Writing in the third person about an elderly, dapper detective is an old idea, but setting the story during the late seventies, in the sleepiest of South East Asia’s communist countries, adds an instant novelty value. The extreme heat, dysfunctional bureaucracy and superstitious aura of Laos give Cotterill plenty of scope for humour, silliness and suspense. The murders Siri has to deal with are far more exotic than Poirot’s predictable poisonings. A series of women are found dead in Vientiane with bite marks around their neck. Is it the black mountain bear that escaped from a tiny cage in the Lan Xang hotel garden? Is it a homicidal lunatic? Or, is it a weretiger? In Luang Prabang, two bodies are found charred to a crisp. A plane crash or a conspiracy connected to the deposition of Laos’ king? And, back in Vientiane, were the two men found dead on the bank of the Mekong, victims of a scooter crash, a suicide, or a malevolent supernatural force in the Ministry of Sport, Information and Culture? The reader can trust that, with the help of his tubby side-kick, nurse Dtui, Siri Paiboun will find the answers.

Cotterill’s plot follows the stock murder-mystery pattern competently. The clues Siri is given along the way are not so much contrived as bizarre. The climax of novel is surprisingly nerve-wracking. In terms of the genre in which he is writing, Cotterill is pulling all the right strings, which is probably why he was the winner of the 2006 Dilys Award for Crime Fiction. Overall, though, Thirty-Three Teeth is not perfect. Cotterill’s prose, at times, has a problem common to novels in which the characters are not speaking the same language as the author. Siri’s blasphemous ‘Oh, Buddha’ instead of ‘Oh, God’ is reasonable, but other translated expressions and Laos-themed similes are awkwardly obvious. The dialogue, sometimes hilarious, occasionally clunked like a sack of bricks. And, while much of the book gives a vivid impression of Laos’ distinctive landscape, Cotterill is no Michael Ondaatje. This may seem like an unfair comparison; but I must stress that what this book can provide is frothy entertainment rather than an enduring reading experience. This is probably evident from the cover and blurb, but a detective story set in Laos could plausibly swing either way.

The niche market for Cotterill’s series is undoubtedly ex-pats and travellers in South East Asia. I expect you could find his name in all good airport bookstores, probably alongside Alexander McCall-Smith. And, as far as a light read during a flight to Bangkok goes, you could do much worse.