A Disappearance in Fiji

Nilima Rao’s debut novel arrives with a glowing endorsement from the prolific and adored Alexander McCall Smith of No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency fame, who describes A Disappearance in Fiji as ‘an utterly charming novel’ and Rao as ‘an author well worth discovering’. It’s a recommendation to thrill any author, and, more to the point, it’s accurate.

From the outset, there are clear and enjoyable parallels with another enormously successful and long-running crime series – albeit a televised one – Death in Paradise. However, as the title suggests, this tale is set much closer to home, and against the dynamically explored, complex colonial world of First World War-era Fiji.

In a classic fish-out-of-water situation, 25-year-old Sergeant Akal Singh, a police officer with the British Raj, has recently arrived in Suva as punishment for a misstep in his previously stellar career in Hong Kong. His new posting with the Fijian Constabulary is less than glamorous, and he is somewhat isolated. Luckily, he has found an amusing and kind friend in Taviti, a Fijian corporal of a similar age with whom he works.

If only he could also find and catch the Night Prowler (a peeping tom preying on children), or solve his new case, that of missing Indian woman and indentured plantation worker Kunti. Her employer blithely maintains that she’s simply run off, but a local priest insists she has been kidnapped. He claims she would never have left her daughter, and had no reason to bolt when she was already three years into her five-year term on the plantation – freedom had been on the horizon; something does not add up.

A Fijian Indian Australian based in Melbourne, Rao has an interest in this period and has clearly done her research. A Disappearance in Fiji is immersive and beguiling cosy (yet tropical!) crime that readers will be pleased to find is the first in a series.