What is Colin Cotterill reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Colin Cotterill, author of I Shot the Buddha.

His entry begins:

By now, fans of this site will know that I don’t find a lot of time for novels. In fact I haven’t read anything intentionally fictional all year. I don’t dislike reading. I just lack the motivation to open a book and then the inspiration to get beyond the first paragraph. It has something to do with my upbringing.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t read. I’m still trying to make up for all those lost years of free education in England when I was too busy chasing balls and girls to take learning seriously. So, when I have time to read it’s invariably non-fiction and, more recently, relevant to research I’m doing for the Dr. Siri books.

The book currently on my bedside table is The Animal Connection which sounds like a Disney Christmas book but is actually a thoroughly depressing memoir of an ex-wild animal trafficker called Jean-Yves Domalain. I promise you when you get to the end of it you’ll...[read on]

About I Shot the Buddha, from the publisher:

A fiendishly clever mystery in which Dr. Siri and his friends investigate three interlocking murders—and the ungodly motives behind them

Laos, 1979: Retired coroner Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, have never been able to turn away a misfit. As a result, they share their small Vientiane house with an assortment of homeless people, mendicants, and oddballs. One of these oddballs is Noo, a Buddhist monk, who rides out on his bicycle one day and never comes back, leaving only a cryptic note in the refrigerator: a plea to help a fellow monk escape across the Mekhong River to Thailand.

Naturally, Siri can’t turn down the adventure, and soon he and his friends find themselves running afoul of Lao secret service officers and famous spiritualists. Buddhism is a powerful influence on both morals and politics in Southeast Asia. In order to exonerate an innocent man, they will have to figure out who is cloaking terrible misdeeds in religiosity.

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

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

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

The Page 69 Test: The Axe Factor.

The Page 69 Test: I Shot the Buddha.

Writers Read: Colin Cotterill.

--Marshal Zeringue