It’s late-70s Laos and National Coroner Dr Siri Paiboun is on his ninth literary jaunt. This time he is taking his wife, Madame Daeng, for a lovely weekend away. Their chosen vacation spot just happens to be the place in which a woman was killed and cremated, only to appear back at her house three days later as if she’d never been shot at all, armed of course with a new clairvoyant ability to talk to the dead. Dr Siri is on the case, and possibly besotted, while his suspicious wife has her own wartime secrets suddenly made public.

Fiona Hardy sells books and talks too much to customers at Readings Carlton, and puts together Dead Write for the