topics: |  fiction | malaysia | singapore | crime |

Inspector Singh, a potbellied senior officer in the Singapore Police
force, enjoys doing his work well, but rarely receives the recognition he
deserves. 

Here he is in Kuala Lumpur, trying to resolve a mystery involving a once
famous Singapore model, who is accused of murdering her husband.  What is
interesting is that she doesn't seem to be interested in helping
herself. ... 

It is the local descriptions of Kuala Lumpur in the post-Mahathir era 
that gives the book a lot of poignancy. 

Excerpts

Singh caught a glimpse of the Formula One racetrack – yet another project
by the previous government to drag Malaysia onto the world stage. Mahathir,
the previous prime minister, was convinced that as long as he built the
biggest, the best and the most expensive of everything, Malaysia would be
treated with respect by the international community. Predictably, Malaysia
had instead become a byword for the funding and construction of white
elephants.

She had married her mogul and gone to live in a secluded bungalow with
twenty-four-hour security and a car to match every dress.

For a while, he watched the steady drip of water from the air-conditioning
unit soak into the carpet.

---
[Jasper, who had given up his share of the timber empire to become a wildlife
activist]
He had disagreed with the old man, the patriarch of the family, insisting
that shared values were more important than shared blood.
... Perhaps it did come down to family in the end.

Jasper looked around him at the photos of orangutans stuck to the walls, all
taken in the depths of the Borneo rainforest on one of his excursions into
the wilderness. There were wizened patriarchs looking calmly at the camera,
young bucks captured on film screeching their aggression at any intruder,
family groups of female orang-utans and their babies. The whole sense was of
a gentle, separate community – so different from the ugly reality of his own
existence.

---

It was a few years since Inspector Singh had been to Kuala Lumpur and he had
forgotten the flash floods and gridlock that rain caused.

Kuala Lumpur was just one large construction site...

---

She nodded to her brother and held the door open to indicate that he was
welcome. They did not hug or kiss despite not having seen each other for over
a year. It would have been completely out of character for either of them to
have expressed emotion physically. Asians of their generation were not
tactile. Affection was expressed, if at all, through food.

To make an effort over dinner, to have a few extra dishes, to remember what
someone liked best and serve it piping hot – that was the way to show family
feeling.

---

And yet, the inspector thought, Kuala Lumpur had a certain something. It was
difficult to put his finger on what it was exactly. There was a sense of
freedom perhaps, of anarchy even, that Singapore so sorely lacked.

Chelsea Liew would usually have a sandwich, carefully crafted by the maid –
tuna mixed with onions and garlic diced fine, a hint of lime squeezed in – or
perhaps a baked vegetable sandwich – aubergine and pumpkin taken out of the
oven when softened to perfection, crispy round the edges, sprinkled with
sesame seeds and served between two slices of brown bread, a far cry from her
childhood meals of congee with fried anchovies.

[repetitive; poor editing:]
the massive ongoing construction site that was modern China.

Mr Chan had one very long nail on his left hand. It curled. He used it
carefully to pick his nose.

Chelsea looked at her phone – a poisonous piece of plastic and circuitry that
could bring her news like this.