Colin Cotterill
Killed At The Whim Of A Hat
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc; First Edition edition
Language English
ISBN-10: 9780857381514
ISBN-13: 978-0857381514
3 Mar 2011
I have always been wary of the “if you like x then you must like y” school of recommendations and my heart sank when I saw “for fans of the Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency” on the cover of this book. I was entirely wrong. This excellent novel takes the very best of the whimsical writing style but has a plot that gives it some real meat on the bones.
Crime reporter Jimm Juree is forced to move away from her career in the hotbed of Chiang Mai with her eccentric family when her mother buys a small holiday resort in a fishing village on the Gulf of Siam. After six months of gutting fish and sweeping floors her inner detective is awakened by the intriguing discovery of a VW Camper Van buried beneath a field, complete with two skeletons as passengers. The very next day a monk is murdered in a nearby town and the local police look to the person standing nearest to the crime at the time but Jimm starts to make connections with crimes all over the world.
Reading this book was a pleasure. The literary phrasing keeps a smile playing on the reader’s lips on every page and the characters are all crackpots in their different ways but entirely believable. The story is set in Thailand but there are no cultural barriers to overcome, it is simply a good story, very well told.
Highly recommended.
Iain Christie
break the rules as I see fit.” - Chris High 2003.