A charming and atmospheric debut mystery featuring a young Indian police sergeant investigating a missing persons case in colonial Fiji.
1914, Fiji: 25-year-old Akal Singh would rather be anywhere but this tropical paradise--or, as he calls it, "this godforsaken island." After a promising start to his police career in his native India and Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and grumpy, Akal plods through his work and dreams of getting back to Hong Kong.
When an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji's newspapers scream "kidnapping," the inspector-general reluctantly assigns Akal the case, giving him strict instructions to view this investigation as nothing more than cursory. Akal, eager to achieve redemption, agrees--but soon finds himself far more invested than he ever expected.
Now not only is he investigating a disappearance, but also confronting the brutal realities of the indentured workers' existence and the racism of the British colonizers in Fiji--along with his own thorny notions of personhood and caste. And early interrogations of the white plantation owners, Indian indentured laborers, and native Fijians yield only one conclusion: there is far more to this case than meets the eye.
Nilima Rao's debut is full of sparkling wit, vibrant characters, intriguing mystery-solving, and fascinating historical detail, both unflinching in its treatment of the atrocities of colonialism and hopeful for a better future.
Story Locale:1914 Fiji
It is 1914 and Sergeant Akal Singh of the Fijian Constabulary, Suva, is a fairly recent arrival in Fiji after being pushed out of his previous post in Hong Kong after a grave misjudgment. Singh buckles down in his new role despite the comic pomposity of his superiors and the casual and not-so-casual discrimination he faces on a daily basis in this racially stratified colonial society.
When word arrives that one of the ‘Coolies’ - the indentured Indian labourers who keep the sugarcane industry alive, has gone missing, Singh ventures forth to investigate in his own indomitable, quietly charismatic way. In doing so he uncovers a much bigger story of abuse, deception and murder.
I want to call this ‘cosy crime’ although the charming main character and gentle storytelling belies the harshness of the backdrop of the brutal lives lived by the long-suffering Indian workers at the hands of their colonial overlords. Yet I enjoyed every word of this evocative, colourful and rather unusual story and emerged with a greater understanding of a piece of history that is probably not given the attention it deserves.
