Jules Jones

Forgot to mention this when my copy arrived -- the latest Inspector Singh book, A Calamitous Chinese Killing, was released in the UK a couple of weeks ago. I've not read it yet, but only because I've still got a backlog of stuff to review properly. Available in paperback and Kindle format now at at Amazon UK, for pre-order at Amazon US, and in epub at Kobo. The UK ebook edition is 3.99, so pretty cheaply priced.

Fifth installment of the series about Inspector Singh of the Singapore police, forever being shipped off elsewhere to get him out of his superiors' hair. This time he's on compulsory sick leave, and thus can't claim pressure of work to avoid being dragged by Mrs Singh to a family wedding in India. But the Singhs arrive only to find that the bride-to-be has disappeared. The last thing her immediate family want is the police involved, because of the social stigma -- the obvious motive for the young woman's disappearance is to avoid an arranged marriage. For the family patriarch, worried about his granddaughter's welfare as well as her reputation, an investigation by a family member who just happens to be a member of another country's police force is a much more appealing prospect.

Then a corpse turns up, and the local police are involved whether the family likes it or not. But Singh keeps digging, and finds a tangle of motives that he's not willing to ignore.

Once again Flint has blended a police procedural with a sensitive look at the ramifications of a real life tragedy. This book is deeply rooted in Sikh culture, and that includes the ongoing after-effects of the 1984 riots and massacre in India. But the latter does not overwhelm the book -- it is only one strand in a complex story about a complex society. A particular feature of the book is that it is quite openly an outsider's view of India, complete with an outsider's prejudices and reactions -- but the outsider here is not a white European, but a member of the Indian diaspora of Singapore. Singh finds India at once both alien and familiar, and this colours his reaction to the things he encounters during his investigation.

Singh is a joy of a character to read about, and Flint has created yet another fascinating twist to her series hook of a police inspector who frequently ends up investigating murder well outside his official jurisdiction. The Singaporean Sikh is a marvellous addition to the ranks of maverick detectives in mystery fiction, and I'm very much hoping that there will be a sixth book in the series.


http://www.librarything.com/work/11236931

I've previously reviewed the three books published so far in the Inspector Singh Investigates series by Shamini Flint, but those were reviews that tried to give an idea of what the books were like without significant spoilers. Is anyone interested in spoilerific discussion, since at least one of you has gone out and read the books as a result of my reviews?

A quick summary: Inspector Singh is an overweight, chain-smoking, unfit detective in the Singapore police force. He's very good at catching killers, but he doesn't really fit into the current force culture, and his superiors are only too happy to get this disgrace to the force temporarily out of sight and out of mind by loaning him to the police forces of neighbouring countries.

One of the reasons he's so good at his job is that he works by understanding how and why people behave the way they do -- a Singapore Sikh version of a certain Belgian detective, or a little old lady from St Mary Mead. Singh's his own man, not just a flimsy pastiche of those characters, but he holds the same appeal for a reader.

The books are set in South East Asia, but some aspects of policing are the same the world over. And the setting is written from the inside -- Flint is a lawyer who has worked in both Malaysia and Singapore, and knows whereof she writes.

I picked up the first book from a table in The Works, because the premise of a crime-busting Sikh detective travelling South-East Asia sounded intriguing. The blurb on the book looked worth investing a couple of hours of time, so I bought it, and found a book that certainly had its flaws, but showed a lot of promise. When the author found my review and offered me review copies of the next two books, I was glad to accept. Those books made good on the potential I'd seen in the first, and I'm now eagerly waiting for the fourth book to come out. Some reasons why coming up in the comment thread...

I was recently offered review copies of the second and third books in the Inspector Singh Investigates series by Shamini Flint, about a Sikh detective in the Singapore police force. I was pleased to accept, as I thought that the first book was very enjoyable, if flawed. I'm very happy to say that the second book, A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul, makes good on the promise shown by the first. The story's just as good, but the writing's much smoother in this episode of the Inspector's adventures, without the choppy pacing and info-dumping of the first in the series. The character of Inspector Singh is a wonderful concept, and this book offers a plot to do him justice.

Singh's a good detective, with a track record in catching killers, but he doesn't fit into the current force culture. So once again inspector Singh's senior officers are only too glad to get him out of their hair by volunteering him as their contribution to a major police investigation in a neighbouring country. In this book the country is Bali, and the crime is once again murder, but this time on a large scale. As the book opens, he's feeling frustrated because for all his skill at catching killers he has no experience relevant to the investigation of a terrorist attack. But soon there is work for him, for Flint has taken the real life tragedy of the Bali bombings, and added a separate murder mystery. One of the skull fragments recovered from the bomb site has a bullet hole through it. One of the dead was already dead at another's hand *before* the bomb went off.

Singh might be a fifth wheel on the bomb investigation, but murder on the individual scale is a completely different matter. He takes on the task of finding justice for the one victim out of dozens he can help in death. His temporary assistant this time out is an Australian policewoman from the bomb investigation team. Bronwyn Taylor has also been sidelined by her superiors for perceived insubordination, and her expert area is Indonesian language and culture, not murder. Her personality is far from a perfect match for Singh's and he often finds her irritating, but nevertheless the two make a good team for this case.

The book's viewpoint moves around between disparate groups who have had their lives disrupted by the bombing. The primary focus is the two police officers; but there is also a group of rather unappealing British and Australian ex-pats, one of whom has been missing since the bomb, a small group of Indonesian Muslims from another island, and of course some of the local Bali people, both within the police force and without. Singh and Taylor have a long slog piecing together the clues, even after an early breakthrough in identifying the shooting victim, but gradually the different threads they hold start to twine together, leading to a thrilling climax.

It would be very easy for a book using this subject to slip into exploitation, but Flint treats it with great sensitivity. One of the strengths of the first book was the way Flint showed multiple culture clashes from multiple angles, and this book develops the same themes. There is no demonising of any one group, and there is a thoughtful examination of how and why the different groups are motivated to behave as they do. The book is often gently funny and relatively light in tone even though it's using such a grim background and tackles some serious subjects. This can be a difficult balancing act to pull off, but this book does it well.

As with the first book, Singh himself is a marvellous character, and the other characters are well drawn. Team this with a good story and an evocative description of Bali, and you've got a book that's well worth your time. I'm looking forward to reading the third book, which is set in Flint's current home, Singapore.

http://www.librarything.com/work/9086827
http://www.librarything.com/work/9086827
Inspector Singh Investigates: Bali Conspiracy Most Foul: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul (Inspector Singh Investigates 2) at Amazon UK
Inspector Singh Investigates: Bali Conspiracy Most Foul (Inspector Singh Investigates 2) at Amazon US