I’m a bit of a Bali fan, so a murder mystery set in Bali was
always going to be something I went for.
Plus Shamini Flint in person, is one very, very funny woman. An ex
lawyer who lives in Singapore, I was as interested in her as I was in her
writing. Not only does she write crime with Asian settings and an
environmental, humanitarian angle, but she’s also written books for kids. The
Sasha series of a few years back was hers – I’d read them to my kids and liked
them.
I didn’t know all that at first, of course. Flint was just one of the
talking heads at a recent conference. And she got me in because she was so
hilariously funny. Honestly I cannot remember having laughed like that, not
even at comedy festivals. I had high hopes for the book; someone with that much
wit could surely write something intelligent that passed the cringe test.
And phew! This book made it. Intelligent and worth reading,
if not perhaps the cracking read I’d been hoping for.
It had been line-ball for quite a while. The first half of
this book annoyed me quite a lot. I didn’t care about any of the characters,
including Inspector Singh, a Sikh policeman from Singapore, or his Australian
colleague Bronwyn Taylor of the Federal Police. The set up had promise. The
Singapore police have seconded Singh to Bali after the Bali bombings because
they don’t like him and want him out of the picture. But, very embarrassingly,
he knows nothing about terrorism and is being baby-sat by an Australian Federal
Policewoman, Bronwyn Taylor who has similarly got herself in hot water with her
superiors and been shunted sideways and out of the action. Then an ordinary
murder is discovered and they are put on the case.
It didn’t take long before I found myself a little bored with
that investigation. It all seemed to revolve around some fairly tedious and
stereotypical ex pat couples. I didn’t like them or really care about the
fellow who was murdered. I kept getting stuck on Facebook making inane comments
on friends’ wall posts instead of racing off to bed to read the book that
hadn’t really got me in.
There was more to it than that. I was attracted to the book
because it was set in Bali, but before long that was putting me off. There was
too much of the travelogue about it. Too many unnecessary cultural details put
there to emphasise the Bali location. Too many italicised local words – it
reminded me of Lonely Planet and the way it likes to chuck in a bit of the
local lingo to show how with-it it
is. And you know what? I’ve been to Bali too. It’s not so distantly exotic to
me. I felt I was being taken on a bit of a tour, complete with tour guide
commentary. And I hate tours. I’m more your independent traveller type. Take me
somewhere interesting, for sure, but Iet me imagine I’m doing my own exploring,
not being lead by the nose.
And I also started to worry that it was all sailing a bit too close to
cultural stereotypes in places. The Balinese are obsequious, we are told. Naturally so, it
seems, because they come from a hierarchical society. They are also way too
chatty and very nosy. And they are terrible drivers. All of this made me uncomfortable
and I found it difficult to relax into the story.
But it got much better as it went on and I did finally really
enjoy this book. By the end I was thoroughly involved with the situation of
several characters and the terrible circumstances in which they are caught up.
The ending of the story actually moved me. I choked back tears, in fact, to my
great surprise.
A few things happened to swing me around. The initial cast of boring ex-pat
couples, who I hadn’t liked, fell away as the story progressed and it
reorientated around a group of Indonesian characters. They were much more
interesting and as the story progressed, I came to care about several of them.
The plot also evolved into something much stronger and more intriguing than the
original set-up which had seemed to me a bit of a boring old Agatha Christie
whodunnit at first.
A caution here for some. The plot of this book surprised me.
It is set in the aftermath of the first Bali bombings. The crime that is
investigated is linked to the Bali bombings and the author fictionalises some
events that follow the bombings, including a second fictional planned terrorist
attack that forms the climax to the novel. Here in Australia the Bali bombings
still touch a lot of people personally. If you’re one of them and think this
would upset you, you might not want to read this book.
But don’t let that put you off reading a different Inspector
Singh book, because in the end it was the Inspector himself that really
captured my attention. Much to my surprise, I ended up finding him fascinating.
I think I was expecting another cardboard cut-out, a fat, turbaned curry eating
Hercule Poirot. He is so much more than that. Flint has really got inside the
head of Inspector Singh; his quirky, off-beat thoughts pepper the story.
I thoroughly enjoyed
everything about him and would happily read more.
http://www.shaminiflint.com/
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