What is Colin Cotterill reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Colin Cotterill, author of Slash and Burn.

His entry begins:

My response to the question, ‘What are you reading?’ usually amounts to The Bangkok Post or one of a heap of textbooks I plough through for research for the books. Fiction doesn’t often make it to the top of the pile. But when I was in South Africa last year (see how casually I drop in the exotic) Deon Meyer signed me a copy of his book, Thirteen Hours. Deon’s a big fella so I started reading it in case he asked me how the book was going. I was on the road – or rather stuck in airports for the next month so I got into it. And I did – get into it. One plotline was a chase thriller, the type of thing I’d happily watch on film but not read. Yet old Deon did a great job of keeping me sucked in. The book came all the way back to Thailand with me and last night, with the power off again here on the rain-swept gulf, I put on the hurricane lamp and finally got the last chapter read. I rarely give a toss as to whether the helpless victim makes it or not...[read on]

About Slash and Burn, from the publisher:

Dr. Siri might finally be allowed to retire (again). Although he loves his two morgue assistants, he's tired of being Laos's national coroner, a job he never wanted in the first place. Plus, he's pushing 80, and wants to spend some time with his wife before his untimely death (which has been predicted by the local transvestite fortune teller).

But retirement is not in the cards for Dr. Siri after all. He's dragged into one last job for the Lao government: supervising an excavation for the remains of U.S. fighter pilot who went down in the remote northern Lao jungle ten years earlier. The presence of American soldiers in Laos is a hot-button issue for both the Americans and the Lao involved, and the search party includes high-level politicians and scientists. But one member of the party is found dead, setting off a chain of accidents Dr. Siri suspects aren't completely accidental. Everyone is trapped in a cabin in the jungle, and the bodies are starting to pile up. Can Dr. Siri get to the bottom of the MIA pilot's mysterious story before the transvestite fortune teller's prediction comes true?

Learn more about the book and author at Colin Cotterill's website.

The Page 69 Test: Anarchy and Old Dogs.

My Book, The Movie: Curse of the Pogo Stick.

The Page 69 Test: Killed at the Whim of a Hat.

My Book, The Movie: Killed at the Whim of a Hat.

Writers Read: Colin Cotterill (August 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Slash and Burn.

Writers Read: Colin Cotterill.

--Marshal Zeringue