A Disappearance in Fiji

Sergeant Akal Singh, formerly of the Hong Kong police, has taken up a new post with the Suva Division of the Fijian Constabulary. He was forced to leave Hong Kong after an embarrassing and near-career-destroying error on his part. In his new environment, Akal hopes to restore his good name but will come up against many challenges, not least bigotry and prejudice, in what he considers to be a colonial backwater.
 
His only friend since arriving in Fiji is his good-humoured Corporal Taviti, relative of an important chief but his boss, Inspector-General Thurstrom, is tough and much less accommodating. When a coolie woman goes missing on a sugar cane plantation, Akal is seconded to investigate. Normally, such a case wouldn’t warrant high priority, but with a delegation coming from India to investigate the conditions of the indentured workers and a local missionary writing to the local newspaper that she has been kidnapped, Thrustrom wants it solved as soon as possible.
 
Akal has many obstacles to overcome in order to find out what happened to the woman, Kunti, and also the overseer, Mr Brown, who disappeared around the same time - some thought he’d gone to join the war effort in Europe. Did Kunti go with him? The arrogant and snobbish wife of the sugar plantation’s owner, Mrs Parkins, is rude and dismissive of Akal, clearly due to his race. In company with the more tolerant local Dr Holmes, Akal travels to the plantation where together they investigate further as to what really happened.
 
Set in 1914, this is a detective novel that carries some echoes of Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe series, but with perhaps more bite as it accurately and unflinchingly faces the exploitation of indentured workers and general racist attitudes of the early 20th Century in British Colonies.
 
Even Akal, as a proud Sikh, has his own caste difficulties when it comes to dealing with the coolie families. “The [indentured] were not the kind of people he would have dealt with in India. Although his countrymen, they were not his people.” And “Suva’s façade of civility showed as many cracks as its roads had potholes.”
 
With a limited number of suspects and motives, the conclusion is not that surprising, but this is still a satisfying read. There is scope here for further adventures for Akal Singh, and maybe even a TV tie-in that could bring a fresh South Pacific setting to the cosy crime genre.
 
Four stars.


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