Colin Cotterill

Born in London, Colin Cotterill has worked as teacher in Israel, Australia, the U.S. and Japan before he started training teachers in Thailand. Cotterill and his wife live in a small fishing village on the Gulf of Siam in Southern Thailand. He’s won the Dilys and a CWA Dagger, and has been a finalist for several other awards.

Cotterill's latest Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery is I Shot the Buddha.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. His reply:

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 never take the kids to a zoo again. It’s one of those remarkable “I can’t believe they got away with it” stories that tells you exactly how an exotic animal makes it to a pet shop in Paris and how many fall by the wayside.

It’s not something you’d read unless you really had to. And I had to. The next Siri will be looking at Laos as an open market for endangered animals. My challenge will be to write it in such a way that my readers don’t slash their wrists before the final chapter.

Visit 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.

--Marshal Zeringue