The woman who wouldn't die

Review by New York Times Review

When it comes to language, Irish poets place a distant second to the crooks in crime novels. Say you're planning a big bank heist. The crew you recruit for the job is likely to include a jugmarker, the tactical genius who designs these delicate operations; a lip man to deliver the boss's orders; a boxman to crack the safe; a bagman to handle the loot; a wheelman to drive the getaway car; and maybe a couple of buttonmen ("they hurt people") to facilitate the whole enterprise. Roger Hobbs has named GHOSTMAN (Knopf, $24.95) after the most elusive gang member - the guy who makes everything disappear. "I'm very good at what I do," says Jack Delton (not his name, but it'll do). "I've survived because I'm extremely careful. I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone. I trust no one." Sexy as that sounds, it's not quite true. Five years earlier, Jack botched an elaborate bank job in Kuala Lumpur, putting him in serious debt to Marcus Hayes, once the master of all jugmarkers and, in Jack's view, "the most brutal man I'd ever met." To shrink his debt, Jack agrees to clean up the mess after another of Marcus's intricately planned robberies - knocking off an armored car full of casino cash - goes bad. How bad? "Bodies everywhere, loot missing, feds circling." That kind of bad. Hobbs, a first-time novelist who's barely out of college but already writing with the poise of an old pro, has put a great deal of wit and ingenuity into Jack's sophisticated professional skills. As someone whose life depends on his ability to operate in plain sight while remaining invisible, Jack is a master at the art of disguise. Give him a bottle of hair dye and the right wardrobe pieces and he can age 20 years, change nationality and walk away with your watch, your wallet and your daughter. But Jack is no common trickster, and his daring criminal exploits are grounded in detailed, well-researched knowledge of all kinds of practical matters, from picking locks to faking the Kazakhstan Crown Diamond. The dangerous mop-up job he's doing for Marcus also involves violence on a grand scale. Lucky for us, Jack's elastic work ethic allows for that too. "No sane person enjoys killing," he concedes, "but it isn't as bad as people make it out to be." Although Hobbs is an assured stylist who favors clean, precise prose, he handles violence with a lyric touch. In a narrative stuffed with gruesome murders, the most graphic death is executed in a gracefully choreographed scene that's remarkably poignant - because it shows Jack in a rare moment of conflict with what appears to be a nascent conscience. Nobody gets a free pass in Denise Mina's sobering novels, not even the white-haired grandfather in GODS AND BEASTS (Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown, $25.99) who's cut down by 10 rounds from an automatic pistol during a post office robbery. After quickly handing his 4-year-old grandson to a stranger, Brendan Lyon, a retired bus driver and a union activist back in the day, steps forward to help fill a canvas bag of money for the robber, who shows his thanks by emptying his gun into the old man. That's only one of the elements Mina weaves into her bleak account of how corruption can poison a city like Glasgow, with its deep economic problems and intransigent class divisions. A popular politician caught in a sex scandal, a petty crook who makes the regrettable mistake of stealing a crime boss's car, two police officers tempted by a stash of drug money, and the strange young man who watched over Brendan's grandson during the robbery all play their fated roles in this thoughtful look at how good people can go bad. There's a grand design to Charles Todd's period novels featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard detective who returned from the battlefields of World War I burdened with a heavy load of survivor's guilt. Each of these elegant mysteries takes Rutledge to some rural district of England scarred by unhealed war wounds and offers him the chance to do penance by solving a crime and restoring justice. This journey of redemption continues in PROOF OF GUILT (Morrow, $25.99) when the inspector is sent to a village in Essex to find a prosperous wine merchant who has gone missing and may be the victim of a murder back in London. With a gentleman's pocket watch as his only clue, Rutledge cuts through the history of a family dynasty to expose the original sin that left later generations fighting a war no one could win. Laughter is a subversive weapon when you live under a repressive regime. That's the take-away lesson from Colin Cotterill's gravely funny novels set in Indochina in the 1970s and honoring the extravagantly colorful life of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the national (indeed, the only) coroner of Laos, "a country without a constitution or a body of laws." In his latest adventure, THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN'T DIE (Soho, $25.95), the irascible Dr. Siri is recently retired, but still a thorn in the side of the Pathet Lao government. Unable to communicate with the dead souls who regularly appear to him, Dr. Siri is delighted to take a tutorial with the bona fide witch engaged by the general in charge of the Ministry of Agriculture to contact the spirit of his dead brother. Since that entails a trip to a provincial region noted for "boat races, beer, views, elephants," as well as romantic cruises up the Mekong, Dr. Siri has no trouble persuading his wife to go along - a fateful decision that contributes a moving chapter to her memoirs. 'I live alone, I sleep alone, I eat alone, says the ghostman. 'I trust no one'.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 24, 2013]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* The ninth entry in this series set in 1970s Laos has National Coroner Siri Paiboun, a man in his late seventies and perpetually on the verge of a longed-for retirement, again pulled back into service to examine remains. The road to those remains is circuitous, as is everything in communist-ruled Laos. It winds through the belief of the surviving brother of a long-dead Lao general that his brother's remains can be found through the clairvoyance of the woman of the title, a woman whom people saw burned on a funeral pyre but who appears again in the village with enhanced clairvoyant powers. It also winds through the suspicion that the excavation for the dead general's remains may really be in service of some other government goal. As Paiboun prepares to question the woman and find the remains, his new wife, Madame Daeng (who runs the most popular noodle shop in town), is stalked by one of her old French lovers. This quirky mystery is filled with unforgettably strange characters (for example, Dr. Siri is a Buddhist gourmand, crafty at getting around restrictions, haunted by thousands of spirits who appear before him regularly). It's also filled with Cotterill's dark humor, best seen in the characters' wry dialogue. Readers who appreciate reluctant cops and detectives, like Tarquin Hall's Indian sleuth, Vish Puri, or Stuart Kaminsky's Russian Inspector Rostnikov, will love Cotterill's cynical, haunted coroner.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist

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

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Cotterill has never been better than in this ninth outing for acerbic Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2011's Slash and Burn), set in Laos in October 1978. A judge who heads the country's public prosecution department asks Siri, who has recently retired as Laos's coroner, to look into a bizarre case. The minister of agriculture's wife has hired Madame Keui-a witch dubbed the "used-to-be woman," because she's alive and kicking two months after her corpse was consigned to a funeral pyre-to help lay to rest the ghost of the minister's brother, believed to have been killed on a covert op in 1969. Siri, who views the boundary between the natural and the supernatural worlds as porous, soon finds himself in the midst of the most baffling murder case of his career. The action builds to an ingenious resolution. A subplot adds a nice layer of depth to the character of Siri's wife, Madame Daeng. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Thailand's crustiest coroner smells a rat when a mysterious woman returned from the dead begins making prophetic proclamations. October, 1978. Madame Used-To-Be has earned a reputation in her Lao village for dispensing bits of wisdom and accurate predictions, warming the hearts of all who visit her. What sets her apart from other prognosticators is that when she was known as Madame Keui, she was shot and killed in a burglary; villagers even saw her corpse burn on a pyre. Elderly Dr. Siri Paiboun (Slash and Burn, 2011, etc.) is drawn to this odd woman quite by accident. He's settled into marital bliss with the colorful Madame Daeng, but the government has abruptly closed his workplace, the Mahosot Hospital morgue. So Siri keeps busy with pet projects like smuggling refugees to safety. He isn't afraid to thumb his nose at Communist authorities. In fact, a judge dubs him the "cordon bleu of blackmailers" due to his ability to leverage scandals about the regime to achieve his ends. That's very awkward for Siri's tart-tongued former sidekick, Nurse Dtui, who's married to dutiful police inspector Phosy. When Siri is dispatched to the Lao village to supervise the excavation of the corpse of a prominent general's brother, he becomes intrigued with Used-To-Be, and it's anyone's guess whether he's as rapt as the humble villagers or simply ferreting out a mystery. After Cotterill's hiatus to launch another series set in Thailand (Grandpa, There's a Head on the Beach, 2012, etc.), the return of that glorious curmudgeon Dr. Siri for a ninth escapade is bliss.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Madame Keui was flesh and blood, or so they claimed, although nobody could remember touching that rewarmed flesh, nor seeing her bleed; not even when a second bullet passed through her. Even so, to all intents and purposes, she was alive in October of 1978 when this story takes place. They'd see her walk along the ridge to collect her groceries or ride her bicycle off into the forest. Some in the village had even heard her speak. She had become Vietnamese, they said. Her Lao was thick with it like too-large lumps of mutton in a broth. She no longer talked directly to the villagers, but strangers from afar came to seek her out. They'd go to her house, a fine wooden structure with expensive Chinese furniture; couples and elderly people and families with children. They'd sit with her in the living area visible from the quiet dirt street. And when they left, those strangers would seem elated as if a heavy rock had been removed from their souls. But when the villagers stopped them to ask what had happened there, they were silent. It was as if they'd forgotten they were ever with her. And perhaps that was why they called her Keui: Madame Used-To-Be. Because whenever they talked about the beautiful old woman it was in the past tense. 'There used to be a woman who spoke with many voices.' 'There used to be a woman who seemed to get younger as the months passed.' 'There used to be a woman whose house gave off a warm yellow glow even when there was no hurricane lamp oil to be had at the market.' And even though they might have passed her on the street that morning, at the evening meal they'd still say, 'There used to be a woman in our village who . . .' And perhaps that was because two months earlier they'd carried her body to the pyre and watched the flames engulf her. Chapter 2 The Ninjas From Housing They lurked in the shadows of the late evening. They'd waited out three nights of diamante skies, the streets lit by a billion stars. And, at last, a bank of clouds had rolled in and given them this brief cover. There were five of them, each dressed in navy blue, which was as near as damn it to black. And in the starless navy blue of the Vientiane night they would have been invisible were it not for the battery-powered torches each carried. The beams negated all the preparations of dressing darkly and applying charred cork to their faces. But in the suburbs east of the That Luang monument there was as yet no street lighting and there were any number of potholes in which to step. At eleven p.m. most of the householders were asleep and dreaming of better times. For any times were better than these. Only one or two windows gave off an eerie khaki glow from lamps deep inside and one by one these were extinguished as the men passed. Torch beams as loud as klaxons. Everyone in East That Luang knew something was about to go down and they all knew better than to come to their windows to watch. Still a block away from their objective, the leader crouched on one knee and signalled for his men to turn off their lamps. They were immediately plunged into the impenetrable black belly of a giant naga. None of them dared move for fear that the earth all around them might have subsided. Yet, not wanting to be considered cowardly, none of them turned his torch back on. So there they remained. Petrified by the darkness. 'Give your eyes a few minutes, lads,' the leader said in a whisper that seemed to ricochet back and forth through the concrete of the new suburb. Those few minutes crawled past but still the men's eyes had not become accustomed to the dark. Even so, their leader stood. They heard the rattle of the large bunch of keys on his belt. They knew it was time to continue the advance on house number 22B742. Butterflies flapped inside them. This would be a moment from which careers were honed. Medals were given for less. They kept close in single file behind the leader who seemed to have a nose for darkness. Up ahead, their target emerged from the night. The house glowed brazenly. Candles flickered in the two front windows and . . . could that be the scent of a tune? Yes. Music. Some decadent Western rubbish. The comrades inside were asking for trouble. Begging for it. They'd get what they deserved this night. The front yard was visible now in the candle glow and the men could see one another's beady eyes. The leader pointed. 'You and you, around the back,' he whispered. 'Don't let any escape. We take every last man, woman and child.' The two men ran to the side alley with a crouching gait not unlike that of Groucho Marx. But their flank advance was stymied by the fact that the side gate was locked, or blocked, or perhaps it was just a fence that looked like a gate and was too high to climb. They looked back for advice from their leader but he couldn't see them in the shadows. Believing the rearguard to be in place, he led the rest of his team up the garden path to the front porch. He was no lover of these roomridden, occidental-style accommodations. Give him open spaces any day. He reached the door. He had a duplicate key, of course, for number 22B742 but it served no purpose. The door was ajar. He swallowed a gasp and pushed against the heavy teak. The door opened far too obligingly on oiled hinges and if not for a sudden lunge to stop its swing it would have crashed into the hallway wall. The flutter of candlelight shimmied from open doorways to the left and right, and up ahead a room he knew from previous visits to be the kitchen was shining brightly. That was the source of the decadent music. And that, he knew, was where the transients would be gathered. They'd attempt to flee through the back door and into the trap he had laid. From his side pack he produced a Russian Lubitel 166. Not the most compact piece of equipment but efficient and easy enough to reload. There would be no mistakes this time. He would have them all. Meanwhile, the two men sent to the back had retraced their steps and were now attempting to round the building on the east side. This too was a problem because they were met by a dog, an ugly, mean-spirited dog who stood and snarled. Drool dripped from its fangs. The men stopped in their tracks. They had reached the rear kitchen window through which a bright light shone on to their uncomfortable situation. Fortunately the dog was chained and beneath the window was a motorcycle. By climbing on to its seat they were able to both avoid the dog and see inside the house. Just as their heads appeared at the mosquito screen, the leader and his two men burst into the kitchen. 'Freeze!' shouted the leader and there was a flash, then another from his camera. 'Don't anybody . . .' But there were no transients in the kitchen, just a solitary old man. He was standing naked in a large zinc bathtub. He was up to his shins in bubbly water and held a particularly impressive loofah. Far from being shocked or embarrassed, the old man laughed, turned away from the men, and loofahed his backside with enthusiasm. 'Search him,' shouted the leader. There was no rush to do so. 'Search all the rooms, the closets, the cupboards, the crawl space beneath the roof.' His head turned in response to some slight movement through the window screen where he saw the faces of the two men who should have been watching the garden. 'What are you doing there?' he shouted. Excerpted from The Woman Who Wouldn't Die 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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