When a murdered woman suddenly reappears in her Lao village home with clairvoyant powers and is enlisted by a ghost to help find his remains at the bottom of a river, national coroner Siri Paiboun oversees the excavation.

The fifth Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery
Seven female Hmong villagers kidnap Dr. Siri on orders from the village elder who hopes that Yeh Ming, the thousand-year-old shaman who shares the doctor’s body, will consent to exorcise the headman’s daughter. He fears that her soul has been possessed by a demon due to the curse of a mysterious Western artifact. Siri agrees to help and, in so doing, brings to pass a prediction of Auntie Bpoo,...

Dr Siri Paiboun, reluctant national coroner of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, is summoned to a remote location in the mountains of Huaphan Province, where for years the leaders of the current government had hidden out in caves, waiting to assume power. Now, as a major celebration of the new regime is scheduled to take place, an arm is found protruding from the concrete walk that had been laid from the President’s former cave...

"Laos, 1979: Dr. Siri Paiboun, the twice-retired ex-National Coroner of Laos, receives an unmarked package in the mail. Inside is a hand-woven pha sin, a colorful traditional skirt worn by women in certain northern Lao tribes. A lovely present, but who sent it to him, and why? And, more importantly, why is there a severed human finger stitched into the sin's lining? Siri is convinced someone is trying to send him a message, and won't let the matter...