Inspector Singh Investigates: A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree

Inspector Singh Investigates: A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree
by Shamini Flint
Piatkus

Inspector Singh has become itinerant again. Having solved a murder mystery that took place in a law office in his native low-crime Singapore, in last year's instalment of this series, book four takes the Sikh sleuth to one of Asia's more lawless cities, Phnom Penh.

Inspector Singh finds himself far from his comfort zone (ideally, any half-decent Lion City Indian eatery with sufficiently chilled beer and a smoking area), and he's bewildered by the ways of law enforcement in the Cambodian capital, a setting only a two-hour flight away from prosperous and orderly Singapore, but which may as well be on another planet.

Singh's here as an official Asean observer at a war crimes trial, where the defendants are ex-Khmer Rouge officials and militiamen accused of committing atrocities during Pol Pot's reign.

But during the trial, a serial killer gets to work in and around Phnom Penh, and Singh is soon drawn into the case, through a collection of individuals from central casting, including corrupt local officials, and an elderly Frenchman back in town after an absence of 30 years.

Most of this book's observations on Cambodia-in-transition are on target. Shamini Flint's protagonist is a quick learner in all matters Khmer (except for the language, whose written form resembles, for him, 'so many earthworms'), but Singh is mistaken in assuming he's visiting a communist country. Cambodia officially dispensed with the ideology altogether in 1993.