Upon closer inspection
Serving in the twilight of a successful, but underappreciated, career in the Singapore police force, Inspector Singh has problems with authority. But when the force needs to send an officer overseas to break a case, it is the overweight, chain-smoking crime solver they rely on. While he is capable and dedicated, he also provides them with an easy scapegoat if things go badly.
The hero of Shamini Flint's Inspector Singh Investigates murder-mystery series finds himself in Bali in the wake of the 2002 bombings to investigate the death of a man found in the wreckage but actually killed by a bullet.
'I wanted to set each case in a different country because I'm trying to bring out, each time, something unique about the culture, but that also forms a motive for murder,' Flint says. 'In the case of Bali, there is a very complex hierarchical society ... and there [is] also a lot of social dysfunction within Balinese society.
'There is this wonderful community of washed-up expats that live in Bali, drink together, run some small business with a Balinese girlfriend; it's the extreme of expat culture, of people thinking they've found paradise but are really living in self-denial,' she says.
Flint, 40, worked for 10 years as a corporate lawyer before self-publishing her first novel, Partners in Crime, in 2006, followed by Criminal Minds last year.
Little, Brown of Britain offered her a three-book deal that saw Criminal Minds re-published in April as Inspector Singh Investigates: A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder. The second, Inspector Singh Investigates: A Bali Conspiracy Most Foul, will be published this month, while Partners in Crime will be published as the third book in the series (retitled Inspector Singh Investigates: The Singapore School of Villainy) once she rewrites the book to give the inspector a heavier role.
'It was only after I completed the first book that I realised Inspector Singh was my most compelling character,' she says.
'He is a composite character of people I've known, especially those who, when I was a lawyer, inspired me by their interest in justice and doing the right thing,' says Flint. 'He's fat, lazy and doesn't take orders well ... [but] he's determined to seek justice for the victims of any murder he's working on.'
Flint had initially intended her first novel to be a coming-of-age tale set in small-town America - a place 'where everybody is fishing and talking' - but her husband advised her to write about what she knew.
'That's when I decided to set my first novel in a law firm in Singapore, even though I wasn't a criminal lawyer,' she says. Inspector Singh is Indian, she adds, because as a member of that community herself, she felt she could write about its quirks; she made him a Sikh to give him a distinctive appearance.
Flint's plots are fraught with political and cultural sensitivities. A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, for example, deals in part with corrupt logging practices in Borneo.
Flint believes too many writers focus on 'exotic' Asia, looking at its past. 'Nobody seems to be writing about Asia as it is; they all seem to be trying to make it even stranger than it is,' she says.
She prefers to look at the gritty realities of contemporary Asia, whether through environmental issues or racial and sexual tensions, or drug trafficking.
'I'm not trying to push a political viewpoint or flag a particular topic, but if you're trying to write about contemporary issues that are divisive within society you inevitably find them,' she says.
Flint is planning a fourth book, to be set in Cambodia, and is considering moving Inspector Singh to Japan and India. 'There will be real culture shocks,' she says.
