Dr. Siri Paiboun books 1 & 2, by Colin Cotterill
3.0 Stars
4-15-2023

Low-key murder mysteries set in Laos, just after their mid-70's socialist revolution. Much of the appeal of the books comes from sort of extrinsic factors, e.g. the setting is interesting and new (to me), the tension between socialist Laos and capitalist Thailand just across the river, the beauty of the land, the poorness but solidness of the people, the advanced age of the protagonist and many of the characters. These things are all sort of fun and interesting in their own right. The stories themselves though felt kind of slack. The A and B plots wander around for a bit, before finally petering out after a certain number of pages. This is a minor spoiler, but light supernatural elements are quickly introduced, with the main character (a coroner/shaman) being able to interact with the spirits of the dead and the land. The supernatural elements though take the wind out of the sails of the mystery elements, e.g. a ghost will just straight up point out who the murderer is (but not like in a narratively interesting Hamlet way), a lucky spirit will save the main character from an assassin's bomb, etc. etc. etc. All told you end up with three elements (murder-mystery, spiritualism, communism) that don't really work well together, at least in terms of plot and pacing. The spiritualism disrupts the mystery aspect. The spiritualism also cuts the legs out from the communism aspect, since there are these sorts of Home-Alone type scenes where native spirits run rings around local Party bosses, making the entire story seem a bit childish. Finally the socialism aspect isn't that well handled; e.g. the book tries to be sympathetic to the time and place that it is set in, but it does not entirely escape from the viewpoint of being written by a capitalist author 50 years later. E.g. the setting is kind of an Dr Zhivago one, with sympathetic dispossessed royalty, and silly communist bosses, and no real mention of why people might have wanted to fight for decades to get rid of the previous regime. I know virtually nothing about the history of Laos, and I'm not about to change that by reading a wikipedia article, but I am confident in saying that these sort of anti-colonialist movements usually had good reasons behind them (e.g. decades of pillage and atrocities). (ok, also not trying to white-wash crimes committed by communist governments, I just want the critiquing to be accurate and balanced.)

Anyway! Putting all that aside, these are fine books for atmosphere, if you want a sort of lazy-river experience of elderly gentlemen bantering with each other, enjoying the simple sandwiches in life, dealing with nosy neighbors, and having enlightening chats with spirits, shamans, and monks. There's also murders and people trapped in caves by were-tigers, but these felt less vivid and interesting than the segments of light-character-interaction between humane and grumpy old people.