A lovely tapestry
Fijian writer makes charming debut with tropical mystery

The crime fiction genre is exploding and giving unheard-of opportunities to first-time authors and veteran novelists alike, encouraging police procedural serials hoping for name recognition.

The results, at least in this moment, are multi-book contracts and big advances to established authors by publishing conglomerates. Debut writers, on the other hand, receive modest exposure with little to no advances. But they do get first-rate editing and dust cover design, and an outfield of sales reps and publicists sending out fulsome blurbs and advance-reader copies to a small army of reviewers like me. 

But young writers with first books now have at least a modicum of hope of securing an agent with a cold call and a barely edited typescript, who can then pitch the big publishing houses with product they had never before dared to recruit. 

In my experience, offshore and small publishers have been and are still discovering and publishing great crime fiction writers and genuinely literary crime fiction. Early crime fiction in the United States began as episodics in pulp magazines, then progressed to back-pocket paperbacks with lurid cover art sold in drug stores and newsstands. All the while, European and British publishers had been featuring true literary writers for decades with fictions that still set the standard for noir literature. 

Currently in the United States, one small New York publisher has run alongside the big American crime imprints with early and steadfast dedication to exceptional crime fiction. Soho Press has fed “Murder Ink” with a steady supply of outstanding mysteries over the years and now gives us a June 6 release, “A Disappearance in Fiji,” a debut by a young Fijian-born woman, Nilima Rao.

“A Disappearance in Fiji” is an easy, warm read that quickly establishes a charm and a hint of starchy humor to this far-away island. This palliates the debauchery behind a system fed lavishly by wealthy Brit-owned sugarcane plantations labored over by families tricked into indentured servitude and overseen like slaves.

With subtleties beyond Rao’s years, the reader gets to stroll along with a proper 25-year-old rookie Indian police sergeant by the name of Akal Singh. The year is 1914, and Singh is on punishment duty for a nameless error he made policing in Hong Kong and is expecting to restore his status after a few days accompanying the Indian Delegation for India’s Relations with Fiji. He has come to review the Indian indentured servitude program and to perfunctorily look into missionary Father Hughes’ reported kidnapping of an indentured woman named Kunti at the Nabanigei plantation.    

The British believed they controlled this primitive and warring archipelago, and the examination of the Nabanigei plantation was intended only to show British hegemony and provide make-work for the delegation of low-level bureaucrats. But Sergeant Singh is Indian, not British, and is young and aspires to higher ranks, so this overland visit was to be thoroughly investigated.

Rao obviously spent years researching and writing this book. And Soho Crime noticeably spent time and talent editing Rao’s lovely voice and unadorned storyline.

Singh is indefatigable in his investigation, probing and digging deeper into every clue, causing supervisors to chafe dumbstruck over Singh’s unveilings.

And we have a story rich with place, culture, pathos and profound suspense amid a country unaccustomed to presumptuous civil servants. 

You won’t forget this book, and remember to ask Maria’s Bookshop for your “Murder Ink” 15% discount. We’ll see awards coming Rao’s way, and I, for one, will be eagerly awaiting her next lovely tapestry.