When an elderly doctor takes over as state coroner of newly formed Communist Laos in the late 1970s, he unexpectedly stirs the bureaucratic pot and unravels three complicated and intertwined murder plots his superiors want to sweep under the carpet.
 
Annotation:
Set in 1976 Laos, one year after the Communist takeover, this mystery introduces Dr. Siri Paiboun, a widowed doctor in his early 70s who is named state coroner. Although Siri has no proper equipment or specific training in this area, he's adept at the skill most essential to doing his job: taking on the government bureaucracy...and winning. In addition, the spirits of the dead appear to him in dreams, providing him with useful clues and protecting him from his enemies. Siri's first few cases include the suspicious death of the wife of a prominent party official and the death by torture of three Vietnamese men.