Monday, June 05, 2023

A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao

 
First Lines: The Fiji Times, Monday, October 5, 1914. Chop Chop ...No, no, Mr. Editor. Mr. Crompton, speaking at he "Night Prowlers" meeting didn't say we want "bodies", we've got quite enough "busy" ones in Fiji, he said "bobbies", good old common or garden peelers, Rogers, Cops or John Hops
 
Sergeant Akal Singh has a promising career in Hong Kong until a humiliating professional mistake sends him to Fiji in disgrace. He spends his days plodding through his work, cursing "this godforsaken island" and the humidity that always makes his turban limp, and longing for a return to Hong Kong. When an indentured Indian woman goes missing, nothing is done until a local clergyman goes to the newspaper. To quiet the man (and the headlines), Inspector-General Thurstrom reluctantly assigns Akal the case.

Akal looks at this as a way to redeem himself and earn a return to Hong Kong and immediately goes to the sugarcane plantation where the woman worked. It doesn't take him long to realize that there's much more going on here than a mere missing persons case.

~

Nilima Rao's debut mystery A Disappearance in Fiji is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a mystery. Twenty-five-year-old Sergeant Akal Singh is very much a young man of his time. He's intelligent and hard-working, but incredibly naive in affairs of the heart, and he tends to view everyone he meets through his blinders of caste and personhood. His relationship with Inspector-General Thurstrom is a thorny one. Thurstrom lost his favorite police officer when the man enlisted to go fight in World War I. He knows the reason why Akal was sent to Fiji, and he'd just as soon the young man vanish in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again. The only bright spot in Akal's working life is twenty-six-year-old Taviti, the local chief's nephew, who longs to do some real police work instead of being stuck at the front desk of the station.

The scales begin to be removed from Akal's eyes when he goes to the sugarcane plantation with Dr. Robert Holmes. There Akal comes face to face with the brutal realities of the indentured workers' lives and the racism of the British colonialists in Fiji as he interviews white plantation owners, the Indian indentured laborers, and native Fijians.

Even though the mystery in A Disappearance in Fiji is rather easy to solve, the book is a vivid snapshot of a landscape and a time period. With Akal, Taviti, and Holmes, Rao has created a cast that grabbed my attention and makes me want to know more about them, to follow along as they solve more mysteries. And as for those mysteries, there is an unsolved one at the end of the book, and I'm looking forward to finding out if Akal and the others can learn the identity of the Night Prowler in the next book. Bring it on!

A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao
eISBN: 9781641294300
Soho Press © 2023
eBook, 288 pages
 
Historical Mystery, #1 Ankal Singh mystery
Rating: B+
Source: Net Galley

8 comments:

  1. It sounds very interesting, although I as every feeling human, will be upset at the exploitation of the indentured workers. But since the review is so good, I may put aside my potential reaction and read it. Fiji fascinates me, although not the conditions of the workers. But it sounds worth reading.

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  2. I am really interested in the setting for this one, Cathy. I don't think I've ever read a book set there. And I do like a historical mystery. It sounds like a good look at the times and the society, too. Glad you found a lot to like about it.

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    1. I hadn't read anything set there either, but since then I've found a present-day police procedural series set in Fiji. I'll have to give it a try.

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  3. This book sounds like the start of a series that definitely has possibilities.

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    1. It really does. If Akal hadn't started "seeing the light" I wouldn't give any more books a try, I don't think.

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  4. I don't think I've read any books set in Fiji.

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    1. Neither had I-- which is the main reason why I chose to read it.

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