It's 1978, and Dr. Siri Paiboun has been retired three months from his post as the National Coroner (the only coroner) of Laos. Though he wanted mightily to retire, after all, he is 73 and newly married, Siri finds that he's in danger of becoming bored.Fortunately, the government decides to send him on a junket. The brother of a Ministry official is presumed killed in an old covert military operation. Unfortunately, his ghost has taken to haunting the family. Siri's mission is to accompany a witch up north and find the brother's body. With a proper service for the body, it is hoped that the spirit will cease causing the official's wife misery, which will nominally stop her from causing the official misery. That is the plan which is stated - but what of the plan left unsaid?In any case, Siri is pleased as punch. "What joy this new mission offered. A witch, no less. A woman who could trace the dead. He'd heard of them, the "ba dong." There were many in Vietnam. There had been incredible stories. A rescue team directed by map to a remote mountainous crop and to within a metre of a shallow grave."In a second story thread, we finally learn some more of Madame Daeng's past. We know that she's not just a humble noodle seller, but just what stories has Siri's intelligent and arthritic beloved left better buried? The man who calls himself Hervé Barnard is looking for Daeng, and it can't be for good. "He sat in his hotel room, waiting, choking in the smog of his chain cigarettes, fuming. The only way he could lighten his mood was by imagining Madame Daeng hanging by the ankles from a beam, and him with a brand new tyre iron."I love Colin Cotterill's writing, and I love his irascible protagonist and all his complicit cohorts. There are serious themes in the books, but all is overlain with humor and more than a whiff of antiestablishmentarianism. If you haven't read any Dr. Siri before, I encourage you to start at the beginning with the excellentThe Coroner's LunchHappy Reader