About
Reviews
Search
Submit
Home

Mystery Books for Sale

[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]


  

GRANDAD, THERE'S A HEAD ON THE BEACH
by Colin Cotterill
Minotaur Books, June 2012
336 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0312564546


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

It's summertime and thoughts may turn to the beach, but if they do, it won't be the beach near Jimm Juree's home in southern Thailand during monsoon season. It's a time when all sorts of things wash up with one tide and then disappear with the next - bags full of used diapers, for example, various household appliances, and on this particular day, a human head.

Jimm Juree, whom we first met in KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT, is still mourning her lost career as the about-to-be-the-first-female crime reporter for a big city daily. Her mother, who seems to dip unpredictably into and out of dementia, sold up all the family owned and bought a run-down beach resort on a beach on the Gulf of Thailand, at a point where a narrow strip of Burma almost severs the province from its connection to Thailand. It's an area that tourists scuttle past on their way to Phuket, rarely pausing even to spend the night.

Jimm's reporter instincts are aroused less by the head than by the behaviour of the private rescue service that comes to collect it. The employees treat the head with contempt, toss it in the back of their truck and threaten Jimm and her brother Arny with a knife, telling them both to forget they ever saw a head.

Of course, telling Jimm anything of the sort is a serious error in judgement. She immediately sets out to discover what she can and in time, learns the head probably belonged to a Burmese, possibly a slave labourer on one of the illicit squid trawlers that work the Bay of Thailand, now fished out of all but trash species. She also learns a great deal about the situation of Burmese workers in Thailand, who live in fear, unprotected from exploitation, kidnapping, and even murder, while the Thai population views them with loathing.

When one of Jimm's Burmese informants goes missing, Jimm springs into action with the help of Arny, her sister (formerly brother) Sissi, grandfather, mother, and, among others, a chorus of karaoke-singing fishermen, not to speak of a world audience of half a million or more watching events unfold on the internet. It's a glorious, hilarious, thrilling conclusion to a complex story told in Jimm Juree's cynical tones.

Funny as it is, GRANDAD has a seriously angry sub-text. As Cotterill assures us, the situation of the Burmese in Thailand that he describes is essentially true. He also has a lot to say about the kind of Christian charity that rakes in pots of money through glossy television ad campaigns that manipulate the children that appear in them without doing much to help them in real terms. The one here is the Thai branch of an international, called Rescue the Orphans Thailand (acronym: ROT). Even the legitimate NGOs come in for their share of comment. Jimm approaches one called Hope for Myanmar to help with her rescue mission. With regret, the woman in charge tells Jimm that the seven Burmese she's trying to save simply aren't important enough to mobilize world opinion around. With limited resources, the organization has reserve itself for something with broader appeal. Jimm doesn't know whether to loathe the woman or admire her honesty.

GRANDAD is a worthy follow-up to KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT. Like that book, this also sports loopy chapter headings, these culled from karaoke mondegreens - mangled English lyrics that Cotterill has been collecting over the years as they are bravely sung by Thai entertainers. One of my favourites: "Because a Fisher Softly Creeping/Left Disease While I was Sleeping" from The Sounds of Silence. Now that Cotterill has got his marvellously eccentric cast in place, we look forward to their speedy return. Jimm Juree and her family may not inhabit a tropical paradise, but Chumphon is certainly somewhere I want to visit again.

§ Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, June 2012

[ Top ]


QUICK SEARCH:

 

Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]