Moon Bear, by Gill Lewis - and remember the Colin Cotterill books?

A couple of days ago my sister was telling me about her recent holiday in Laos. It was a cycling holiday. She and her husband generally have holidays like this, which are clearly designed to make the rest of us feel very lazy and blobby indeed.

A random picture of Laos - which certainly does look very lovely.

Anyway, she said that Laos (which also featured in Sue Perkins' recent documentary series about the Mekong) was very beautiful. I had told her about the Colin Cotterill books about a coroner/detective who tracks down criminals with the help of a very motley crew, including a centuries old shaman. I reviewed them here. Like me, my sister thoroughly enjoyed the Dr Siri books - and she found it particularly special that she was able to read them in the place where they were set. She also found out that Cotterill uses profits from the books to fund a project which pays for teachers to be trained to work in Laos, and also for books to go to children there. So all the more reason to buy his books, apart from the fact that they're such a treat that I'm really looking forward to the pleasure of re-reading them.

Funnily enough, never having known the slightest thing about Laos before coming across the Dr Siri books, I recently read another book set  there. It's called Moon Bear, and it's by Gill Lewis, whose first book, Sky Hawk, was an instant hit. She writes for children, but she is also a trained vet, and her books so far have all featured animals and raised questions about human responsibility with regard to endangered species.

Moon Bear is really not an easy read, but it's a very good one. At the centre of it is a boy called Tam, whose village is in the way of a new dam. The dam may overall be a good thing for the people of Laos - but it's certainly not good for the villagers, who have to move from their homes to a new village. At the beginning of the story, Tam has captured a moon bear cub, which he knows he can sell for a good price. When they move, all does not go well for Tam and his family, and he is forced to go to the city to earn some money by working in a place where bears are kept in appalling conditions and 'milked' for their bile, which is much prized in traditional medicine. It's horrendous in every way - but it gets even worse for Tam when a new bear cub arrives. It turns out to be the one he caught, and he becomes very attached to it.

His relationship with the bear is in many ways simpler than his relationships with other human beings. He has to decide who among his friends deserves his loyalty and his trust: who needs him most, and how he can be a good person despite his circumstances and despite the turmoil he, his family and his country are going through.

It's a complex book and often a harrowing one. Read it - but maybe then go and hang out with Dr Siri and his pals for noodles, banter, and light relief - though particularly in the later books, politics and cruelty are also present. There is humour in the Chief Coroner's world, but there are also the chilly realities of poverty and realpolitik - and those same realities drive the ordeals that Tam undergoes in Moon Bear.

Reading the detectives 3: The Dr Siri series, by Colin Cotterill

You stumble across good books in all sorts of ways, don’t you? Often, people whose judgement you trust recommend them to you. Sometimes you read about them in reviews, or on blogs like this one. Sometimes a cover catches your eye in a bookshop.

I’m actually mystified as to how I came to have a copy of one of Colin Cotterill’s series about the reluctant chief coroner of Laos, Dr Siri Paiboun. I found it in a pile of books in my son’s old room. I thought perhaps he’d left it behind after a visit home, but he denies all knowledge of it. It was published in 2007 – perhaps I bought it in a 3 for 2 promotion, and then decided I didn’t like the look of it after all.

I don’t know. Anyway – reader, I read it. And loved it. And then I read the one that preceded it – for some reason I had bought the second in the series – and most of the ones that followed it. (I’m trying to keep one or two in reserve, in case a time comes when no other book will do.)

The books are set in the late 1970s, when a communist government has just taken power in Laos. Dr Siri has been a freedom fighter and doctor in the jungle, and his close friend Civilai is one of the men in power. Siri is in his late 70s and looking forward to retirement – but: ‘There was nothing frail about Dr Siri… His short, solid body still scurried hither and thither like a curious river rat. Younger men were hard pressed to keep his pace… His mind, resplendent with his newly honed skills, had become even keener of late… For reasons he was still trying to fathom, he’d been delegated Laos’s honorary consul to the spirit world.’ (Oh yes - his body is host to a long-dead shaman called Yeh Ming, which doesn’t sit easily with Siri, as he’s by nature a cynic and a realist.)

So he’s an unusual character - as are the other regulars in the series. Take his nurse, Dtui, who assists him at the morgue. She longs to be a doctor herself. She’s plump, clever, and funny. Then there’s Mr Geung, the other member of the morgue team. He has Downs syndrome, but he has been trained by Siri’s predecessor, knows the procedures better than either Siri or Dtui, and is an essential member of the team. Civilai shares Siri’s wit and cynicism. This core group is joined later by a policeman called Phosy and by another ex-revolutionary, who becomes Siri’s second wife.

This bunch of wise-cracking misfits prove to be incredibly good at deciphering mysteries and righting wrongs, and they are the central, dazzling attraction of the series. The dialogue crackles, and the books are very, very funny. On the cover of the first one I read, they are compared to Alexander McCall Smith’s Ma Ramotswe books, but they’re much edgier and, particularly as the series progresses, also much deeper. As with many series, the context is at first quite shadowy, but it becomes more sharply focused as the series goes on; in one book, for instance, Siri finds himself a prisoner in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime – and there’s nothing funny or whimsical about the way that experience is described. Gradually, we find out more about the recent history of Laos – Siri meets the deposed king in a surreal encounter in an orchard; although they have been on opposing sides in the struggle for the country’s future, they spend a happy night getting drunk together. Later, Siri finds himself involved in the plight of the Hmongs, a tribal people who have few rights and whose ancient way of life is being trampled in the name of progress.

These books are absolutely delightful. They have so many of the prerequisites of a good book – they transport you to another place that you knew little about; they’re funny; they have moments of high drama; the dialogue is sharp and witty; the characters earn your affection, and the narrative is cleverly handled. If you haven’t come across them yet, you’re in for a treat.