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Jimm Juree Case Files #5

Number Five: Trash

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Number Trash is the fifth in a new series of Colin Cotterill short stories featuring his female news reporter and detective, Jimm Juree. Fans of Jimm know her from the four novels where, with the help of the members of her strange family, she usually solves the crime. Move over Miss Marple, Jimm Juree does it for the 21st Century.


Not a message in a bottle; instead it's in a sealed plastic bag which once held medicines, stuffed inside an old sardine can and washed up on the beach. A cry for help by someone held against their will? And is there any connection to the Burmese labourers dying from malaria? Another case for Jimm Juree.

38 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 28, 2018

15 people are currently reading
56 people want to read

About the author

Colin Cotterill

71 books1,017 followers
Colin Cotterill was born in London and trained as a teacher and set off on a world tour that didn't ever come to an end. He worked as a Physical Education instructor in Israel, a primary school teacher in Australia, a counselor for educationally handicapped adults in the US, and a university lecturer in Japan. But the greater part of his latter years has been spent in Southeast Asia. Colin has taught and trained teachers in Thailand and on the Burmese border. He spent several years in Laos, initially with UNESCO and wrote and produced a forty-programme language teaching series; English By Accident, for Thai national television.

Ten years ago, Colin became involved in child protection in the region and set up an NGO in Phuket which he ran for the first two years. After two more years of study in child abuse issues, and one more stint in Phuket, he moved on to ECPAT, an international organization combating child prostitution and pornography. He established their training program for caregivers.

All the while, Colin continued with his two other passions; cartooning and writing. He contributed regular columns for the Bangkok Post but had little time to write. It wasn't until his work with trafficked children that he found himself sufficiently stimulated to put together his first novel, The Night Bastard (Suk's Editions. 2000).

The reaction to that first attempt was so positive that Colin decided to take time off and write full-time. Since October 2001 he has written nine more novels. Two of these are child-protection based: Evil in the Land Without (Asia Books December 03), and Pool and Its Role in Asian Communism (Asia Books, Dec 05). These were followed by The Coroner’s Lunch (Soho Press. Dec 04), Thirty Three Teeth (Aug 05), Disco for the Departed (Aug 06), Anarchy and Old Dogs (Aug 07), and Curse of the Pogo Stick (Aug 08), The Merry Misogynist (Aug 09), Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (Aug 10) these last seven are set in Laos in the 1970’s.

On June 15, 2009 Colin Cotterill received the Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library award for being "the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to library users".

When the Lao books gained in popularity, Cotterill set up a project to send books to Lao children and sponsor trainee teachers. The Books for Laos programme elicits support from fans of the books and is administered purely on a voluntary basis.

Since 1990, Colin has been a regular cartoonist for national publications. A Thai language translation of his cartoon scrapbook, Ethel and Joan Go to Phuket (Matichon May 04) and weekly social cartoons in the Nation newspaper, set him back onto the cartoon trail in 2004. On 4 April 2004, an illustrated bilingual column ‘cycle logical’ was launched in Matichon’s popular weekly news magazine. These have been published in book form.

Colin is married and lives in a fishing community on the Gulf of Siam with his wife, Kyoko, and ever-expanding pack of very annoying dogs.

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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Profile Image for Susan.
2,191 reviews17 followers
March 12, 2020
Collecting trash on the beach, Jimm Juree’s grandfather finds a note pleading for help. The story is clever enough, but it is only 43 pages and about 20% of that is boilerplate. Hardly a satisfying read.
168 reviews1 follower
June 13, 2018
Very short but extremely entertaining. I also laughed a lot at this clever read.
Profile Image for CRM.
344 reviews5 followers
March 23, 2020
Thoughtful, well written, engaging story. Proving it is not the number of words written but the content of your story that matters.
Profile Image for Cathy Cole.
2,230 reviews60 followers
December 9, 2018
"Trash" shows what can happen when Jimm's grandfather (whose hobby is picking up trash that washes up on the beach) finds a tin can with a note inside. All the stories in this series are enjoyable, and all show Cotterill's talent with ingenious puzzles, humor, and a wide range of characters who prove that all people, no matter their circumstances, have value. I'm definitely looking forward to Jimm's next case.

1,096 reviews23 followers
December 19, 2020
A joy, as ever. I didn't actually see the solution coming, and I was satisfied with both parts of the ending. It was also nice to get some more time in with Jimm's crabby granddad.
8 reviews2 followers
September 22, 2020
Loved the first three Jimm Juree full length stories, but disliked the short stories 4 and 5. Will I read the rest of the short stories? Hard to know.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews

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