Of snobs and stray heads

Colin Cotterill has written seven novels in the Dr Seri series, which tell of the comic misadventures of the National Coroner of Laos who emerges from thirty years in the jungle with the Pathet Lao after their victory in 1975. I’ve read the first three and thoroughly enjoyed the repartee between Dr Seri and his old friend Arun, now a high ranking cadre.
Cotterill has switched to a new series set in modern day Thailand featuring Jimm Juree, a 34-year-old divorcee and former crime reporter for the Chiang Mai Mail.
In the first novel of the series – “Killed at the Whim of a Hat” – she cuts all ties in Chiang Mai to follow her mother who has just bought five beach bungalows in Chumphon. Along with her come her bashful body builder brother Arny and her granddad Jah, an taciturn, ill-tempered former traffic policeman. Staying behind in Chiang Mai is her “sister” Sissi, a former transsexual beauty queen and now a reclusive internet outlaw.
These characters form the backbone to the second novel of the series. “Granddad, There’s a Head on the Beach” is what Jimm says when she comes back from a walk on the beach with the two family dogs.
A sinister policeman and two thugs from the local body snatching society determine that the head belonged to a Burmese and thus is of no further  concern, though a fake investigation is officially written up.
At the same time a car with no license plates and a middleclass mother and college-age daughter with no identification turn up at the bungalow, obviously on the run from someone.
The mystery of the two fugitives is soon solved by Sissi, the computer whizz. At Georgetown University, the daughter had caused an aristocratic classmate to lose face.
For this they’re being hounded by a hyper-efficient uber-Gestapo dedicated solely to Thai aristocrats. Now I know that this is a farce, but that’s just plain silly.
In the other case, the head on the beach belongs to a Burmese fisherman who has been murdered aboard a fleet of three slave ships. Jimm proposes to Police Lieutenant Chompu, with whom she has the same camaraderie that Dr Seri has with Arun, to go out to sea to confront the slavers. The lieutenant is a homosexual so effeminate that he has been transferred all his life from post to post. He’s also a coward. Wisely, he refuses her proposal,
“Fine,” she says. “Never mind. I’ll die without a hero by my side. Without ever knowing what it’s like to have a man stand up for me, put his life on the line out of love.”
The slave ships make no sense either. Why go to all the expense of hiring a corrupt police officer and a couple of thugs to abduct Burmese and ship them out to slave ships, not to mention paying and equipping Thai armed guards to watch over them, when they’ll work for chickenfeed anyway? What’s the point?
Still the climax is a rousing one, with action the shifting between Jimm narrating her scoop into her video camera aboard a small fishing boat and her audience of mother and sister Sissi who’ve taken over an internet shop.
They’re watching the action, which has gone viral, along with the rest of the world. The unhappy internet shop owner suddenly realises that what he’s watching is not a TV show.
“This is all real, isn’t it?” he asks Sissi.
The book of full of off-the-wall funny stuff, making it a thoroughly enjoyable read. It really doesn’t matter if you don’t buy the idea of the uber-Gestapo or Burmese slave ships.
 

Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach
BY COLIN COTTERILL
PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS BOOKS, 2012
AVAILABLE AT LEADING BOOKSHOPS