Dr. Siri Paiboun, one of the last doctors left in Laos after the communist takeover, has been drafted to be national coroner. He is untrained for the job, but this independent seventy-two-year-old has an outstanding qualification for it: curiosity. And he doesn’t mind incurring the wrath of the Party hierarchy as he unravels mysterious murders, because the spirits of the dead are on his side. With the help of his newly appointed secretary, the ambitious and shrewd Dtui, and Mr. Geung, the Down syndrome–afflicted morgue assistant, Dr. Paiboun performs autopsies and begins asking questions to solve the mysteries relating to the death of the wife of a government official and of the unidentified body fished out of the river—a body that was not drowned, but tortured with electricity. As it turns out, all is not peaceful and calm in the new communist paradise of Laos.