Colin Cotterill Books in Order

Cotterill's first novel is a dark thriller shaped by his child-protection work, following a trail of abuse and exploitation in Southeast Asia. It is harsher than his later mysteries, but the anger and compassion are already there.

Detective John Jessel investigates child murders in Surrey while a Karen doctor returns to the Burmese border carrying her own dangerous agenda. Their stories converge around the same old evil, and neither comes out untouched.

In mid-1970s Laos, seventy-two-year-old Dr. Siri Paiboun is pulled out of retirement and made national coroner. When a politically sensitive corpse lands in his morgue, he finds murder, state secrets, and some very restless dead.

In 1970, Indiana widower Waldo Monk is counting down to retirement when he meets fierce young Lao-American Saifon. Their unlikely friendship takes them from a pool-ball factory to Laos, where Saifon's past opens onto the secret war.

Dr. Siri heads to Luang Prabang as mutilated bodies, official panic, and spirit-world trouble start to pile up. To solve the case, he has to balance forensic thinking, village belief, and the realities of the new Lao state.

An arm sticks out of a newly laid walkway near the old revolutionary caves of Huaphan. Siri is sent to identify the buried man, and the excavation uncovers murder, secrecy, and a past someone hoped would stay sealed.

A blind retired dentist is run down by a logging truck, but Siri does not buy the accident story. A coded note in invisible ink pulls him toward political intrigue and the possibility of rebellion.

Kidnapped by Hmong villagers, Siri is asked to deal with a girl thought to be possessed by a demon linked to a strange Western object. The case mixes prophecy, folklore, and a village mystery with real danger underneath.

This comic story collection follows murderers, pranksters, bank robbers, perverts, and plain old liars who are all old enough to know better. Cotterill treats ageing as a license for mischief, not good behaviour.

When a young woman arrives at Siri's morgue strangled and tied to a tree, he starts to see a pattern. The hunt for the killer leads into the countryside, where even a seventy-something coroner is not safe.

Three Lao women are murdered with fencing swords, and Siri is drawn into a baffling investigation. Before he can finish it, he is sent to Cambodia, where the case collides with the brutal reality of the Khmer Rouge.

Former Chiang Mai crime reporter Jimm Juree is miserable after being dragged to a rural Thai village by her eccentric family. Then a van holding two skeletons and a murdered abbot give her exactly the story she needed.

Siri wants retirement, but first he is sent into the northern jungle to supervise the recovery of an American pilot's remains. What should be one last official job turns into another knot of history, politics, and murder.

A severed head washes up on the beach near Jimm's new home, and she jumps at the chance to chase a real story. Her investigation soon tangles with a frightened mother and daughter who are clearly running from something.

This short prequel introduces Jimm Juree, the bicycle-riding Thai reporter with a nose for trouble and a wildly eccentric family. It is a quick first look at the wit and chaos of her world.

Alan is an ordinary schoolboy, never quite good enough to make The Team. Then a freak turn of events drops him into a life of talent, fame, and attention, and he learns that being special comes at a price.

Jimm is sent to interview a celebrated foreign crime writer living near Maprao, just as local women begin disappearing. A creepy diary, a missing wife, and her grandfather's suspicions make the assignment feel dangerously personal.

A Lao woman is killed, cremated, and then somehow returns with the power to speak to the dead. Siri and Madame Daeng travel to a remote river excavation where war secrets and local belief are tangled together.

CIA man Robert "Bodge" Leon has spent years behind a desk dreaming of real fieldwork. Sent to the Vietnamese highlands during the French war, he steps into espionage, divided loyalties, and trouble stretching back to the United States.

A beautiful handwoven skirt arrives in the post with a severed finger stitched into its lining. Following that clue sends the retired Siri north on a scavenger hunt that quickly turns deadly.

When a monk disappears and leaves behind a cryptic plea for help, Siri and his friends start pulling at several linked mysteries at once. The trail leads through religion, murder, and motives that are anything but holy.

This Jimm Juree prequel sends Jimm and her siblings onto the set of an American film shooting in northern Thailand. Between murder, missing treasure, and movie-set chaos, she gets the sort of assignment no reporter forgets.

An armored security van is found abandoned and emptied of cash on Highway 41. Then midnight groans from a neighboring shophouse suggest the robbery is far more complicated than it first looked.

Exiled in southern Thailand and short on prospects, Jimm Juree stumbles into a new line of work by accident. Being Jimm, she also stumbles into crime almost immediately.

Laos heads to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and Siri wrangles himself a place on the trip. There he suspects one athlete may be an assassin, then finds himself in the middle of an international murder mess.

A car goes into a river and a woman dies, leaving behind what looks like a simple tragedy. Jimm is not convinced, and her instincts tell her the grieving husband is not the whole story.

Siri decides to make a Lao version of War and Peace with a smuggled movie camera and more enthusiasm than sense. Cultural censors, political absurdity, and a fresh mystery turn the project into a dangerous farce.

This darkly funny cartoon collection imagines historical, mythical, human, and animal figures taking one final photo at the worst possible moment. It is Cotterill the illustrator, gleefully turning death into a visual joke.

When a tourist is raped and killed at a southern Thai resort, the police quickly pin the crime on a Burmese migrant worker. Jimm gets involved and soon realizes the convenient suspect may be the wrong one.

A homeless tramp believes someone is trying to kill him, and he hires Jimm to find out who. With help from her family and a friendly gay cop, she uncovers a case stranger than it sounds.

Jimm thinks she is just having one awful day involving one of her mother's dogs and a trip to the vet. By nightfall, she is also tied to a bank robbery and one very bad decision.

A handsome young postman delivers one mysterious letter after another and pulls Jimm into a new case. What begins as internet scamming soon slides toward something much darker and more dangerous.

A message sealed in a sardine can washes ashore among the beach rubbish Jimm's grandfather collects. The note may be a plea from someone held captive, and it may connect to Burmese laborers dying of malaria.

Leaving her handbag behind in a supermarket car park should be embarrassing, not dangerous. But when Jimm gets it back, she is dragged into social media and a very modern kind of investigation.

A stout American tourist is kidnapped in Maprao, and the police turn to Jimm for help with the English-language side of the case. She and local cop Chom soon discover that nothing about it is straightforward.

A death threat aimed at Siri and everyone he loves forces him to revisit key episodes from his past. To stop the killer, he has to understand what happened years earlier in Paris, Saigon, and Hanoi.

Jimm agrees to help a local nurse who thinks she is being stalked. The search for her pursuer opens onto a wider mess of secrets, perversion, and very bad local behavior.

Jimm finds something valuable on the beach without realizing what it is or who might want it. Her grandfather understands at once, and the chance at a fortune brings exactly the wrong kind of trouble.

An urgent note and a bilingual wartime diary land in Siri's hands with no explanation. The search for the truth behind the journal sends him and Madame Daeng south into buried Second World War secrets.

In 1996 Thailand, bored postman Supot and his best friend Ali discover a mysterious unreleased film called Bangkok 2010. Their hunt for its makers becomes a strange, movie-soaked mystery about memory, power, and buried stories.