Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot (Dr. Siri Paiboun #15) by Colin Cotterill; 2020. Hardcover

Laos, 1981: When an unofficial mailman drops off a bilingual diary, Dr. Siri is intrigued. Half is in Lao, but the other half is in Japanese. It appears to have been written during the Second World War by a kamikaze pilot. To the chagrin of his wife who has to hear him read the diary out loud, Siri embarks on an investigation into the text. He begins to obsess over the diary's abrupt ending ... and the riddle of why it ended up in his hands. Did the pilot ever manage to get off the ground? To find out, he will have to hitch a ride south and uncover some of the darkest secrets of the War.