Great lines from The Coroner's Lunch

Another mystery set in an exotic locale actually written by a Brit expat. Why are those Brits so damn good at this type of stuff?

Colin Cotterill lives in Thailand currently and has worked to prevent the child sex trade. Here is a link to an NPR story about him. He felt like the Laos were underrepresented in literature.

The Lonely Planet, btw, says the Lao people are some of the chillest on earth and it's a great travel destination. The story takes place in the capital of Vientiane. Here is a map:

This explains how Dr. Siri, the protagonist, is able to hear the banned Thai radio programs.

Dr. Siri is a 76 year old coroner in 1970's Laos following the communist takeover. I wish I knew more about this area. They've had their problems but obviously not as bad as Vietnam or Cambodia.

Here, Dr. Siri ponders his Communist party membership:

If the truth were to be told, he was a heathen of a communist. He'd come to believe two conflicting ideas with equal conviction: that communism was the only way man could be truly content; and that man, given his selfish ways, could never practice communism with any success. The natural product of these two views was that man could never be content. History, with its procession of disgruntled political idealists, tended to prove him right.

Just to remind us that living in a communist Utopia isn't all it's cracked up to be, Dr. Siri is awakened very early on his only day off to go dig a canal by his local Communist leader:

Community service in the city of Vientiane wasn't a punishment; it was a reward for being a good citizen. It was the authorities' gift to the people. They didn't want a single man, woman, or child to miss out on the heart-swelling pride that comes from resurfacing a road or dredging a stream. The government knew the people would gladly give up their only day off for such a treat.

....

"What happened to all the prison inmates? They used to do all this. Dig ditches, unplug sewers."

"Dr. Siri, I'm surprised at you....There's no longer any excuse for the uneducated and ignorant to be doing all our dirty work. We're all perfectly capable of lifting a hoe and swinging an ax....All our ill-advised criminal types are undergoing re-education at the islands. You know that."

...

When he went downstairs, he found two trucks loaded with drowsy silent neighbors, obviously overcome with delight. Area 29C was providing the labor for irrigation canal section 189.  

Dr. Siri gets the shaft for falling in love with the wrong chick when he received his medical training in France:

She had learned of the French Communist Party from her first lover, a skinny young tutor from Lyons....Whereas Siri had come to Paris to become a doctor, Boua was studying nursing as a pretext: she was actually in Paris to become the best communist she could be, in order to return to elevate the downtrodden masses in her homeland. 

She made it clear to Siri that if he wanted her hand, he had to embrace the red flag also. He did want her hand, and the rest of her, and considered four evenings a week, the odd Sunday, and five francs a month, cheap at half the price. At first, the thought of attending meetings that espoused the fall of the great capitalist empire made him uneasy. He was quite fond of the music of capitalism and fully expected to dance to it as soon as the chance presented itself. He'd been poor all his life, a state that he was hoping to recover from as a doctor....So it was that communism and Boua conspired to damage his hopes and dreams.... The patients adored him, and the staff at the Hotel Dieu Hospital thought so highly of him that the administration asked him to consider staying on in France...but his heart was with Boua, and when she returned to further The Cause in her homeland, he was at her side. 

...This was it. This was the team he'd inherited, the job he didn't want, the life he didn't expect to be leading.


Siri is given a ride home by his friend, the policeman Phosy (who has been "re-educated" to limited success thankfully) after he survives an assassination attempt:

The bike growled away, leaving Siri in the lane in the dark. Despite his brave words, it was still an eerie spot. Around him there were a few yellow lamps, some candles in neighbors' windows. There didn't seem to be insect noises any more at night. People wondered whether the bugs had all escaped across the river, too.