Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach: A Jimm Juree Novel (Jimm Juree 2) [Kindle Edition]

I'm a big fan of Colin Cotterill's Dr Siri books, so I thought I'd give his new detective Jimm Juree a go. I read the first Jimm novel "Killed at the Whim of a Hat", and found it fairly entertaining, I hoped that the second novel would be even better. Again it's entertaining, but this series just seems to lack the witty zing and black humour of the Dr Siri novels.

It's not a bad book, the characters are interesting, amusing and eccentric, and the setting in a small town in Thailand is described well(the author is a long term resident of Thailand).

Jimm Juree is a young Thai woman who had dreams of being a star reporter. Her dreams are crushed when her mother sells the family home and business in the city, and forces her eccentric family to move to a crumbling beach resort in a rural backwater. Jimm decides that there could still be "big stories" to investigate even in this unlikely setting . In this book Jimm's adventures begin, when she discovers a human head on the beach. She becomes involved in a dangerous investigation into the plight of Burmese migrant workers. Will Jimm, her timid bodybuilding brother, transvestite "sister", taciturn grandpa and increasingly absent minded mother be a match for corrupt policemen, violent goons and pirate slavers ?

Definitely worth reading, but if you haven't already done so I would recommend reading Cotterill's Dr Siri books to really appreciate the author's skill and humour.

Having read all the Siri books, I found the first Jimm Juree book a little hard to get into. However, this story was much better and the characters are starting to evolve.

...Yes, exactly, that's his question.
- "A Head of what?"
- "What?" - Our Jimm repeats, nearly speechless...
- "Head of fish?" - "Head of dog?" - "Head of cabbage?" he continues...
- "Head of man." answers Jimm Juree, our yet well known thirty-something ex crime reporter from Chang Mai. Unfortunately she was trasplanted by the (higher) force of her a-little-bit-out-of-the-road Mair (Mum), together with her body-building brother Arny (in honor of Schwarzy) and the above mentioned Grandad Jah, an ex street policeman in semi-permanent mental absence, to a lovely but doomed seaside resort in rural costal Southern Thailand ( see: Killed at the Whim of a Hat (Jimm Juree 1).
This fateful morning, as every morning, Jimm took the dogs Gogo and Sticky Rice out on a stroll along the beach, littered with debris and garbage and single shoes because of the monsoon tides.
Sticky, in search of food as always, found the head, a single, lonesome head - no body attached. So she hurries to give the notice to her police schooled Gramps.
Questioned if it could have been a shark attac, Grandad answers: "Only if the shark was using a sabre. This death has nothing to do with sea creatures."

As the word spreads, police men arrive. And also a special police officer makes his entrance - specialised on cases like this - body parts or entire bodies arriving on the beaches around Pak Nam. He only responds to Code M.
M as Maung, which means Burmese, yes, but it isn't a very friendly name for them...

And here we get right to the core of the case.
Around Pak Nam supposedly are living 5.400 Burmese citizens, doing every work someone gives to them. Before the men let their families die of hunger or disease in Myanmar, they come over to Thailand - mostly illegal aliens - to do all those things the Thai don't like to do anymore.
We will find the ex chief surgeon of Urology at East Yangon Hospital drying fish, because he has a very sick son at home and he's payed for this work twice as much in Thailand than he earned as a doctor in Myanmar...
In front of our heroine unravels a clew of corruption and violation of even the most basic of human rights - to live in peace and to live in freedom...
Every week are disappearing Burmese - legals with "Sponsors" or illegals, it doesn't matter - to never been seen again. Or maybe only parts of them, stacked in the Freezer of a so called "Human Rights Organization ONG" ...

Eager to solve this case, our Jimm will find very, but very very usefull help from the missing member of the Juree clan. The former elder brother, now after the "Great Snip" an "Auntie Sissi", ex Miss Thay, Asia, Frisco World of Transgender etc, an IDOL in the cyber-world. She has made up her mind to fly to Seoul for a ball of former "ducks", that were able to come out as "SWANS"...
But destiny intervenes, and so Sissi will make some of the most important contributes to save a lot of lifes.
All together, the Jurees will uncover gruesome acts of piracy and slavery, violence and murder in the Gulf of Thailand. The authorities all haven't shown any interest in those cases of bodies, body-parts, maybe because the victims simply are not Thai???
Whatever the reason may be, Jimm and her Team are going to handle this injustice all on their own, even when the fiend seems to outnumber them by "normal" weapons!
But the Lord Buddha has many ways to help his disciples...as there is KARAOKE.
Read and learn more!!!

Remains an other big, black question mark!
Who exactly are those two elegant women, obviously mother and daughter in cabin three without any ID, nor plates on their car, and why has the engine number been filed away? There is a lot more to discover.
But when our once so hilarious heroine gives her best in interrogating the poor 'lil daughter, she will spill out the facts about the "Rich and Powerful" abusing and threatening average people out of their normal lives.

But Jimm Juree and her Nearest and Dearest are the right persons to solve all those mysteries.
There will be a more than strange "Mother-and-Child-Reunion" to get out of an imminent danger a mistreated friend - or shall I say a "Damsel in Distress???
And - then - at the very end - there will be one BIG, but very very BIG surprise to all fans of Jimm Juree & Family!!

I have read this second book about the Raving Reporter Jimm Juree with very much pleasure, but let's face it - with one laughing and one weeping eye...
Because this book faces a reality which Colin Cotterill as a long-time Human Rights Fighter in South East Asia knew and knows until now very well.

The wits and twists of the story, those very out-of-a-normal-range-persons, the idea and last but not least - KARAOKE, make this book a more than interesting story for readers who enjoy the Dr Siri series, but also for those who simply like rural costal Southern Thailand (and the Islands just a bit more to the East...)

PS.: As Colin Cotteril writes one page 326 "He wished to have made up the whole story about the Burmese. But sadly, in a less bizzare form, it is TRUE!
If someone wants to see what our Burmese brothers and sisters face, take a look at this BBC article from 2011. Things aren't better today.
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