Disco For the Departed

In Vientiane’s Mahosot Hospital morgue, 73-year-old Dr Siri Paiboun, national coroner of Laos, handles the fatalities at the state hospitals—and the odd murder. His assistants—the gorgeous, clever, fat Nurse Dtui and the slow but irreplaceable Geung—have helped Dr Siri out of scrapes before in The Coroner’s Lunch and Thirty-Three Teeth.

Leaving Geung guarding the morgue, Siri and Dtui land in a remote mountain village where a mummified arm is protruding from recently…