I Shot the Buddha
A fiendishly clever mystery in which Dr. Siri and his friends investigate three interlocking murders—and the ungodly motives behind them
Laos, 1979: Retired coroner Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, have never been able to turn away a misfit. As a result, they share their small Vientiane house with an assortment of homeless people, mendicants, and oddballs. One of these oddballs is Noo, a Buddhist monk, who rides out on his bicycle one day and never comes back, leaving only a cryptic note in the refrigerator: a plea to help a fellow monk escape across the Mekhong River to Thailand.
Naturally, Siri can’t turn down the adventure, and soon he and his friends find themselves running afoul of Lao secret service…
Colin Cotterill is the author of twelve other books in the Dr. Siri Paiboun series, including The Coroner's Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, Six and a Half Deadly Sins, I Shot the Buddha, and The Rat Catchers' Olympics. His fiction has won a Dilys Award and a CWA Dagger in the Library. He lives in Chumphon, Thailand, with his wife and their many deranged dogs.