Review of Colin Cotterill, The Woman who Wouldn't Die, a Dr Siri mystery

Chosen: from the circulating selection in the village library

Similar to: the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries


I came in to the Dr Siri series about half-way through, or possibly towards the end, so at least half of my description of the novel's setting is probably going to be wrong. Set in Laos in the 1970s, a country still under a military / communist rule, Dr Siri is Laos's only coroner, although he seems to have been sacked under mysterious circumstances relating to another novel. (This is the downside to picking up books from the local library, which never seems to take into account the fact that many people like to begin at the start of a series, and then move on one by one. Our library seems to specialise in having only the middle part of a trilogy, and a random selection of novels throughout a series.) Dr Siri is called in by the authorities to validate the claims of a medium, who is claiming to be able to track down the bodies of those who have died in the country's long and bloody struggle for independence. Meanwhile, Dr Siri's wife is being pursued by a sinister figure from her young days as a freedom fighter. Is the medium telling the truth about her mysterious abilities? And can she guide Dr Siri in the use of his own psychic powers? (It turns out that psychic powers in a coroner are less use than you might imagine.)

It's a remarkably cosy novel,  despite the ostensible subject matter of Laos's fight for independence from the French. Filled with extraordinarily nice characters, all of whom spend their time being nice to each other, you're left in no doubt that nothing unpleasant will happen to any of the main characters, even if the author has to pull in an extraordinary and previously almost unmentioned deus ex machina to do so.

Good comfort reading for a winter's evening, but I was left oddly without a sense of place. Compared to Magdalen Nabb's novel 'Death in Springtime' about poverty among Sardinian shepherds*, this left me without a sense of place, and without any real feeling for what makes Laos unique. It could very easily have been set in an English village, and very little would need to be changed. Still, the library has a few more of Cotterill's novels, and I'll probably pick them up for light entertainment.

*And far, far more gripping than this suggests


Update - after a discussion with colleagues in the office, I realise that at least I'm now rather better informed about Laos 20th century history than I previously was, which has to up the star rating of this book somewhat.