Nilima Rao

A Disappearance in Fiji is billed as an historical mystery. It is that—and quite good. It also offers a look into the multi-layered and dehumanizing elements of colonial-era racism. The mystery itself is built around the disappearance of a woman from a sugar cane plantation whose workers are all indentured Indians (as in India). They've traded five years (which usually turns out to be more than that because of contracts written to the employers' benefit) of unrelenting labor in exchange show more for the chance to attempt to build new lives in Fiji—lives which may, or may not, offer better chances of some small economic success than was possible in their home country. These indentures are facilitated because the British administer both India and Fiji, allowing the colonized to move from one colony to another, generally without much hope of improved lives.
The woman who has disappeared has a husband and daughter who have been left behind. Most people—the farm's owner, the woman's husband, pretty much everyone from Britain, and local politicians and police—are more than happy to assume she's run off with with an overseer who disappeared around the same time. A few people aren't so sanguine: a pastor who insists the woman would never have abandoned her daughter, that daughter herself, and police sergeant Akal Singh, who has been assigned the case. Sing makes for an interesting central character. He's originally from India and previously worked in the police force in Hong Kong. Now, because of a scandal at his previous workplace, he's been transferred to Fiji, where his supervisor dislikes him and opportunities for proving himself are limited. Added to this, Singh is Sikh, while almost all Indians living in Fiji are Hindu. The British view him as just another "coolie," an assumption he hates because it lumps him together with the many indentured workers on the Island and erases his position and history of work with the police force.
That's a longish précis, but these details are important. The novel is built around a mystery, but its real subject is the impact of colonialism, particularly its disrespect for the colonized people and the inevitable lumping together of the colonized, despite many differences in class, faith, and income. Singh is joined in his investigations by a British doctor who objects to the British treatment of Fijians and Indians, but who is also comfortable working within the colonial system and can ignore the worst of its abuses.
The combination of mystery and exploration of colonialism works well. The lack of interest in determining the fate of the missing woman provides a specific instance of the general British unwillingness to see the colonized as fully human. The miserable conditions under which the indentured work and live—workers' housing is large, poorly constructed and partially walled barracks in which each family is given only a single room to live, food is scarce and of limited nutritional value—are viewed by the British as perfectly reasonable for these "savages" being "civilized" through the benefit of colonization.
Sergeant Singh is an interesting character, disinterested in issues of equity and human rights, more focused on his own career path and his desire to return to Hong Kong as soon as possible. Assuming A Disappearance in Fiji is the first volume in what will become a series, Singh is clearly on the precipice of a personal awakening that will be every bit as thought-provoking as the plots of future mysteries themselves.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own. show less

Prospects are very limited for Akal Singh in India in 1914. He decides to join the British police force and is sent to Hong Kong where he makes a beginner’s mistake. He’s allowed to stay in the force, but is sent to backwater Fiji as punishment.

He’s assigned to working a dead end case when a local pastor makes a disturbance about an Indian coolie woman who has gone missing. The coolies are Indian nationals who work on the British plantations as indentured servants after Britain had show more formally ended slavery. The Indian coolies are the very poorest of the poor, hoping to fulfill their indentures and move on to a better life. In reality, very few are ever able to pay off their indenture papers and conditions are as bad, if not worse, than the former enslaved population endured.

Akal Singh, a Sikh, finds that the British colonials often lump him together with the Indian coolie class instead as a professional man. Nevertheless, he has a knack for investigation and a friend in the force who is a native Fijian whose family has some distinction. Singh has been told that the missing woman has run away with the overseer, but that soon is revealed as a tragically false assumption.

The stars of this mystery are the country itself and its plantation system, ruled almost like small kingdoms with little recourse against the British owners. It’s a three tiered system with the British on the top, the native Fijians and other workers in the middle and the coolies the lowest of the low. I knew nothing about the history of Fiji and so enjoyed the background very much.

I also liked Detective Singh as he struggles for respect from those who believe he does not deserve any, while at the same time respecting those he serves. This is the first of a series – I’ll read more as they are available. show less

In 1914, Akal Singh, a Sikh police officer recruited to serve in Hong Kong, had a promising career until a blunder nearly cost him his job. Instead of dismissal, he is sent to Fiji, a sleepy backwater colony of the British Empire, where the most pressing case is a flasher, who so far has resisted capture. Akal feels at a dead end, until a missionary calls attention to a missing "coolie" woman – an indentured laborer brought to Fiji to work on a sugar cane plantation, like tens of thousands show more of impoverished Indians in the early twentieth century. Normally, a runaway worker wouldn't be considered important enough to bother investigating, but the local newspapers have publicized the missionary's claim that she was kidnapped, shaming the local inspector general enough to dispatch Akal to the plantation.

Traveling with a sympathetic English doctor who makes regular trips to the plantation to tend to the indentured workers, Akal discovers the horrific living conditions on the "coolie lines," the dismal hovels where exhausted laborers cook their meals and sleep. Kunti, the missing woman, is supposed to have run off with an English overseer who went off to join the war that has just started in Europe, but those who knew her say she wouldn't have abandoned her young daughter. As Akal begins to ask questions, he learns more about the lives of Indian workers, while being thwarted at every step by English assumptions that they must be above such interference from a colonial subject. Ultimately, he will have to face a choice: follow orders, or follow his conscience.

Soho's crime imprint has provided a great service to mystery readers everywhere by bringing stories from around the globe to our armchairs. Now, thanks to an author who lives in Australia but has family roots among Indians who settled in Fiji after indentured servitude, we can visit a time and place that is fascinating but little known. Along with a well-wrought mystery and a vivid historical setting, she has created a protagonist who is just enough of an outsider to be an informative guide, easing our introduction to a dark history with the gentle humor and generous spirit reminiscent of Colin Cotterill's Dr. Siri series. With a solid cast of minor characters to keep him company, Akal Singh may be off to a better career in Fiji than he ever hoped. show less

In this second mystery in the series, our hero Akal Singh, a Sikh police officer who has been demoted to the remote backwater of Fiji after a security lapse (that was also a racial lapse - a non-white fraternizing with a white woman, shock!) is assigned to accompany a couple of Australian women to a smaller town where a relative has died. While they organize a household, Akal and his jocular Fijian sidekick look into rumors of Germans spying on the colony. Though the Great War is raging in show more Europe, it seems unlikely that Germans would bother with such a distant colony, yet as they investigate they encounter the body of an unpopular shopkeeper. Clearly something is afoot, and the younger of the Australians (who has ambitions to be a journalist) wants to be involved.

While the stakes seem lower in this series entry than in the first, which vividly depicted the injustices of a system that was imposed once slavery was made illegal (slavery lite?) the story moves quickly and the characters and setting are well depicted. The biggest twist for me was in reading the afterword, which described how much of the story is based on the historical record. I love learning from fiction, and the author does a a nice job of drawing on history to develop interesting stories. show less