1914, Fiji: Sergeant Akal Singh would rather be anywhere than this tropical paradise – or, as he calls it, ‘this godforsaken island’. After a promising start to his police career in Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to the far-flung colony of Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and
embarrassed, he dreams of solving a big case, thereby redeeming himself and gaining permission to leave. Otherwise, he fears he will be stuck in Fiji for ever.
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. But as soon as Akal arrives on the plantation, he identifies several troubling inconsistencies in the plantation owners’ stories, and it seems there is more to this disappearance than meets the eye . . .
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Nilima Rao is a Fijian Indian Australian who has always referred to herself as ‘culturally confused’.
She has since learned that we are all confused in some way and now feels better about the whole thing. When she isn’t writing, Nilima can be found wrangling data (the dreaded day job) or
wandering around Melbourne laneways in search of the next new wine bar. A Disappearance in Fiji is her first novel and she is currently working on a second.
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My thoughts: I didn’t know much about the British occupation of Fiji, other than that it happened, so this was really interesting to read, and obviously a lot of what went on was appalling. I really like Sergeant Akul Singh, a Sikh Indian police officer, formerly in Hong Kong, dispatched rather unhappily to Fiji, and sent to investigate a missing indentured Indian woman, a “coolie”, working on a plantation.
He encounters racism, sexual violence towards the women, murder and cruelty. The living quarters are horrific and so are the working conditions. Slavery might have been abolished, but this felt like it under a different name.
Akul is an educated man, his father a teacher, and he too is appalled by what he finds. Torn between the orders of his superior and the desire for true justice, he risks being sent back to India in disgrace. But he won’t be deterred and assisted by the British doctor who accompanied him, he sets about getting answers.
I felt sorry for him, the career defining mistake he made in Hong Kong was genuine – he was naive and a bit stupid, but he worked to rectify things. Hopefully as this series develops, people see that is a very good detective, and not a bumbling idiot. I look forward to reading more about him.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 