Curse of the pogo stick

Review by Booklist Review

In his fourth outing, Dr. Siri Paiboun, the aged and antic national coroner of mid-1970s Laos, begins facing up to some tough consequences of the Communist takeover he helped bring about especially the creeping corruption of his party's elite and the persecution of those among the nomadic Hmong people who fought on the other side during the revolution. Siri sees the impact of this maltreatment firsthand when he and Judge Haeng, his bumbling, blustering boss, are kidnapped by Hmong villagers. They know Siri hosts the spirit of a thousand-year-old shaman and want him to lift the titular curse from their ragtag clan. Meanwhile, back at the morgue, Nurse Dtui and cop hubby Phosy tackle a Royalist plot involving booby-trapped corpses. Judge Haeng keeps the proceedings from becoming too grim by effecting a comic escape from the Hmong and then inadvertently eating a bowl of pig swill full of anything unfit for human consumption . . . the inedible, the unpleasant and the indescribable. But even with Cotterill dishing out decent helpings of broad humor, Curse still ranks as the darkest entry of this fine series.--Sennett, Frank Copyright 2008 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In his fifth appearance, national coroner Dr. Siri is kidnapped by fellow Hmong villagers to lift the curse of the pogo stick after a booby-trapped corpse wreaks havoc in his morgue. Cotterill lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Adult/High School-In this delightful, fifth Dr. Siri novel set in late-1970s Laos, Cotterill once again manages a winning combination of elements: crisp plotting, exotic locations, endearing characters, political satire, witty dialogue, otherworldly phenomena, and a deep understanding of Hmong culture. The story begins when Dr. Siri Paiboun, the 73-year-old national coroner of Laos, attends a Communist meeting in the north that is so tedious that a member of the audience literally dies of boredom during an endless speech. While the doctor is away from home, a booby-trapped corpse is delivered to the morgue. The always-alert and resourceful Nurse Dtui is the only one who notices something amiss, and her swift action saves the lives of several people, including an arrogant visiting doctor and Madame Daeng, Dr. Siri's fiancee. But most of the book concerns the doctor's eventful trip back from the meeting. He is kidnapped by seven female Hmong villagers who, under the direction of the village elder, call upon Yeh Ming, the thousand-year-old shaman who inhabits Dr. Siri's body, to perform an exorcism. The chief's daughter suffers the curse of the pogo stick (yes, there really is a pogo stick) and is possessed by a demon. Only Yeh Ming can free her soul. How all of this gets resolved is another example of the superb storytelling readers have come to expect from Cotterill.-Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Some primitive villagers might just love Dr. Siri to death. Judge Haeng, head of the Justice Department in newly Communist Laos, demands that curmudgeonly coroner Dr. Siri accompany him north to examine the body of a Party official. Since recent political upheavals in the late 1970s, the north has become home to many refugees from China, known as Hmong, feared to be violent. Because Haeng is Siri's boss, the elderly coroner can complain but not refuse. Tart-tongued Nurse Dtui, temporarily in charge of the Vientiane cutting room, faces an immediate challenge: a corpse booby-trapped with explosives. Then morgue assistant Geung recognizes a dangerous criminal called The Lizard in a batch of photographs some of the nurses took casually, and Dtui and her husband Phosy, a police detective, undertake an investigation. Meanwhile, Siri faces danger when he's captured by a group of Hmong villagers and Judge Haeng flees. Believing Siri to be the long-dead shaman Yeh Ming, his captors take him back to their village and stuff him with food. (The eponymous pogo stick hangs on the wall of a hut, revered as a sacred icon.) They want him to reverse the string of catastrophes that has depleted their numbers--or else. Dr. Siri's fifth (Anarchy and Old Dogs, 2007, etc.), with its echoes of Orwell and Waugh, tips more toward social satire than detection, with Cotterill's ironic pen as sharp as ever. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Prologue As there were no longer any records, the Hmong could not even tell when they actually misplaced their history. The event had deleted itself. But the oral legend that was passed on unreliably like a whisper from China would have them believe the following: The elders of the Hmong tribes had gathered to lead the great exodus. For countless centuries, their people had been victimized by the mandarins. With no more will to fight, the time had come to flee. Traditional nomads, the Hmong had few valuable possessions to carry. They would lead their animals and build new homes when they reached the promised lands to the south. But there was one artifact that belonged to all the Hmong. It was the sacred scroll that contained their written language, legends, and myths of ancestors in a sunless, ice-covered land, and, most importantly, the map of how to reach their nirvana: the Land of the Dead in the Otherworld. With great ceremony, the scroll was removed from its hiding place, wrapped in goat hide, and given the position of honor at the head of the caravan. The Hmong walked for a hundred days and a hundred nights and on the hundred and first night they were lashed by a monsoon that drenched them all before they could find shelter. Cold and wet, they sat shivering in a cave until the sun rose. The keeper of the scroll was distraught to discover that the rain had soaked through the goat hide and dampened the sacred document. Chanting the appropriate mantras, they unrolled the text and laid it on the grass to dry beneath the hot morning sun. And the followers, exhausted from their sleepless night, found shade under the trees and fell into a deep sleep. While they slumbered, a herd of cattle found its way up to the mountain pass and discovered both the sleeping Hmong and the hemp scroll inscribed with vegetable dyes. And, starved of new culinary experiences, they set about eating this delicious breakfast with vigor. The Hmong awoke to find their sacred scroll chewed to pieces. They chased off the cattle and collected the surviving segments. These they entrusted to a shaman who stayed awake with them and kept them safe and dry for the next hundred days and hundred nights. But on the hundred and first day, the clouds finally parted and the sun shone and the Hmong found themselves in a deserted village. Not one to ignore the lessons of experience, the shaman laid out the segments in the loft of the longhouse. Certain the remnants of the scroll wouldn't be attacked by cattle or goats or birds there, he finally joined his brothers and sisters in a well-earned sleep. But he hadn't taken the rats into account. Half-starved and desperate, the rats set about the hemp and devoured it in a frenzy. Unsated, but with the memory of food now implanted in their minds, they then turned upon one another. When the Hmong finally climbed into the loft, all they found were several ratty corpses and a few unreadable shreds of their culture. This, according to the legend, was how the Hmong lost their history and their written language. 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. He stewed over this for a lifetime or two before he could find it in his heart to forgive them. But he didn't send them a new scroll or a new script, for that really would have been tempting fate. Instead, he taught six earthly brothers how to play six music pipes of different lengths. By playing together, this sextet found they were able to guide the dead to the Otherworld without the map. But, as they got older and found themselves with more personal commitments, it wasn't always easy to get them together to perform. So See Yee taught mankind how to put the six pipes together and play them with six fingers as one instrument. Thus, the geng was born. When the geng was played, people swore they could hear t Excerpted from Curse of the Pogo Stick by Colin Cotterill All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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