Historical fiction mystery set during the Indian indentured labor period. The novel is well-written and sheds like on this devastating time in history while weaving in a riveting but heartbreaking mystery.

I couldn't get into this book unfortunately I couldn't connect with the writing style and the time period

In 1974, Steve and I travelled to Fiji, en route to Australia. Tensions between the indigenous Fijian and the Indian population were high. In this debut novel set in 1914, the reader learns some of the background to Fijian life under colonial rule. When a young Indentured Indian woman disappears from a plantation, Sgt. Singh is sent to investigate. He discovers that conditions for the indentured Indians was deplorable. Interesting historical police procedural.

I admit to never having thought of Fiji beyond a beautiful place I’d like to visit someday. This book changed that conception, and I’m grateful. Everywhere has a rich history, and the author brought Fiji’s to the table along with a delightful hero and interesting side characters. Looking forward to book 2.

Nilima Rao’s debut novel, A Disappearance in Fiji, is a historical mystery that sheds light on the devastating consequences of a British colonial policy that is little discussed today. In so doing, she presents a very different image of Fiji from the tropical paradise and exotic holiday destination the country is now perceived as.

Fiji’s Ordinance No. VI of 1878—colloquially known as the Indian indenture law—paved the way for over 60,000 Indian citizens to travel to the island nation as indentured labourers between 1879 and 1916. Intended as a means of overcoming the labour shortage in the British colonies, the indentured servitude program was viewed by many as a means of reintroducing slavery via the backdoor.

In the case of Fiji, Indian workers signed contracts committing to working on the sugarcane plantations for a period of five years. They were required to engage in back-breaking work for long hours in exchange for little pay and slum-like accommodation. While the program might have seemed like a good option for a destitute Indian worker, racism and abuse were rife, especially for female workers.

Against this backdrop, Sergeant Akal Singh is doing his best to settle into Fijian life after effectively being exiled from the Hong Kong Police Force following a humiliating professional mishap. It’s October of 1914 and he has been a policeman in Suva, the capital of Fiji, for six months. During that time he has been assigned only one case: the Night Prowler, an unknown individual with a propensity for peeping through children’s bedroom windows.

However, when well-meaning missionary Father David Hughes goes to the local press about the disappearance of an indentured female worker from a plantation owned by powerful Australian couple Henry and Susan Parkins, Singh is forced out of his professional rut. While the official story is that the woman has absconded with the former overseer of the plantation, Hughes insists that she would never willingly leave her daughter behind.

Fearing that the disappearance might draw the attention of the visiting Indian delegation and so threaten the indentured servitude program, Singh’s superior officer reluctantly dispatches him to the plantation to investigate. It’s made clear to Singh that he should merely rubber stamp the official explanation that the woman has run away, but once he arrives in Nakavu and witnesses the conditions on the plantation, he comes to suspect that there might be a far more sinister reason behind her disappearance.

A Disappearance in Fiji is an intriguing mystery with an equally intriguing setting. It’s rare to find a crime novel set in Fiji, particularly a historical one, and Rao does a great job of establishing the period and introducing the distasteful practice of indentured servitude in a way that adds to the story rather than detracts from it. She has clearly done a great deal of research into the practice, its beneficiaries, and its victims, but that research is woven organically into the story so that readers learn through Singh’s eyes as his investigation progresses.

In terms of the plantation in Nakavu, Rao excels at bringing its customs and environment to life. In stark contrast to the Parkins’ palatial dwelling, the ‘coolie lines’, the slum housing where the Indian workers live, are particularly powerfully evoked as being practically unfit for human habitation. Both the work the Indians are required to do and the conditions they are forced to exist in are harsh and dehumanising. Here, Rao writes just as much about place as she does about crime.

A sense of place is less clearly evoked in relation to Suva. While the city is Singh’s base of operations, one that he mentally contrasts poorly with Hong Kong, it doesn’t come to life as a whole. Certain locations are introduced and fairly clearly described due to Singh’s presence in them, but it would have been good to have a more full picture of the city. Likewise, more could have been made of the change of geography and conditions on the journey from Suva to Nakavu.

Sergeant Akal Singh is a complex and well-rounded central character. In some ways, A Disappearance in Fiji is a coming-of-age tale as Singh finds his feet in Fiji and begins to move beyond the professional disgrace that brought him there. Although there are other Indian police officers stationed in Suva, Singh remains an outsider due to his rank, his religion, and rumours about why he had to leave Hong Kong.

Less surprisingly, Singh is also an outsider among the white population of Fiji. Despite being the country’s senior Indian policeman, he is looked down upon by many and regularly encounters racism. This is particularly striking when he visits the plantation with (white) Dr Robert Holmes and it is suggested that Singh should stay in the coolie lines while Holmes stays in the big house. There are many other disturbing instances of racial inequality and prejudice.

Singh himself isn’t fully blameless in this regard though. He considers himself to be socially superior to the indentured workers and doesn’t feel any kinship with them due to their shared Indian nationality. In fact, he seems equally insulted by the fact that the Parkins’ don’t want him to stay in their house and by the suggestion that he should stay with the workers. The problems of the caste system are highlighted here and Rao elucidates the sometimes unexpected nature of racism.

Rao also reveals the inherent sexism of the time and place. Life as an indentured worker was particularly dangerous for women, while they were also customarily marginalised and overlooked. There is made clear through the missing women largely remaining a cypher. Her disappearance is central to the plot but she somehow remains a peripheral character in her own story.

A Disappearance in Fiji is intended as the first book in a series featuring Sergeant Akal Singh and there seems plenty of scope for him to solve further cases, including identifying the Night Prowler. It would be good if future investigations focused more on the Fijian population and brought their culture to the fore.

Sargeant Akal Singh does not want to be in Suva, Fiji. His supervisor doesn’t want him there, either, which is why Singh always gets the worst, most pointless cases. Unfortunately for Singh, he’s been banished from his post in Hong Kong to the island backwater to help the British keep order in their colony, which means putting up with constant racism, strict social divides, and the loneliness of being one of the few Indians not in indentured servitude. A Disappearance in Fiji, by Nilima Rao, puts us in Singh’s shoes as he embarks on another seemingly futile case: to find a missing indentured Indian woman.

In 1914, Fiji was very different from what we Westerners see in tourist brochures these days. In Rao’s Fiji of more than a century ago, the islands are still a British colony. There is no air conditioning. Plantations sprawl across the island, with thousands of indentured Indians (lured on flimsy promises and mostly unable to read the contracts they signed) laboring in the heat and humidity to bring in sugar and other commodities. The rest of the world is days or weeks away by boat. Indigenous Fijians have been pushed to the side politically and geographically. Society is a pyramid with Europeans firmly ensconced at the top. Somewhere in the middle of all this is the very resentful Akal Singh.

When we first meet him, Singh is the policeman the other police give cases they want to give lip service to, the ones that are probably unsolvable but need to have someone assigned to so that the higher-ups can say something is being done. We find Singh on the day that Kunti’s disappearance lands in his lap. A vicar near the plantation where Kunti was indentured has kicked up a fuss in the newspapers that Kunti has been kidnapped. The plantation owner and Singh’s superior are sure that Kunti just ran away and they want the story to go away, as a group of government officials is on its way to inspect the treatment of indentured Indian workers in the colony.

Singh travels into the interior of the island, to the Parkins’ plantation, under orders to ask a few questions and file a quick report listing Kunti as just another runaway. But when Singh starts to ask those questions—and sees the appalling conditions the indentured workers are expected to deal with—his inner sense of justice springs into action. He asks more questions. He bothers people he’s been told to leave alone. He goes places he’s been warned off of. And, of course, he finds a nasty snarl of crimes pulsing just below the skin of the ostensibly respectable plantation.

A Disappearance in Fiji is an intriguing mystery that I wish had included more about the landscape, culture, and history of the islands. Singh, given that he is very clear that he wants to be off the islands, is not the best guide with all his carping and irritation. On the other hand, Singh has a sharp eye for injustice and is a fantastic guide for the systemic racism of Britain’s colonial system.

A historical mystery set in a place we don't get to read much about at all. So, first of all, kudos to the writer for taking this on. The story itself is fascinating. I wish we had more time with some of the characters, but I do realize the nature of this genre and how the plot needs a particular trajectory.

Nilima Rao's debut mystery A Disappearance in Fiji is as much a coming-of-age story as it is a mystery. Twenty-five-year-old Sergeant Akal Singh is very much a young man of his time. He's intelligent and hard-working, but incredibly naive in affairs of the heart, and he tends to view everyone he meets through his blinders of caste and personhood. His relationship with Inspector-General Thurstrom is a thorny one. Thurstrom lost his favorite police officer when the man enlisted to go fight in World War I. He knows the reason why Akal was sent to Fiji, and he'd just as soon the young man vanish in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again. The only bright spot in Akal's working life is twenty-six-year-old Taviti, the local chief's nephew, who longs to do some real police work instead of being stuck at the front desk of the station.

The scales begin to be removed from Akal's eyes when he goes to the sugarcane plantation with Dr. Robert Holmes. There Akal comes face to face with the brutal realities of the indentured workers' lives and the racism of the British colonialists in Fiji as he interviews white plantation owners, the Indian indentured laborers, and native Fijians.

Even though the mystery in A Disappearance in Fiji is rather easy to solve, the book is a vivid snapshot of a landscape and a time period. With Akal, Taviti, and Holmes, Rao has created a cast that grabbed my attention and makes me want to know more about them, to follow along as they solve more mysteries. And as for those mysteries, there is an unsolved one at the end of the book, and I'm looking forward to finding out if Akal and the others can learn the identity of the Night Prowler in the next book. Bring it on!

This book is such a fun read, which is odd as the subject matter is difficult. Set in 1914 Fiji, at the time a British colony, the rollback of slavery in Britain made it difficult for colonies to obtain workers for their sugar cane and other plantations. The solution (a fairly short lived one) was to import Indians as indentured servants. The workers signed up for a set time – five years – and then were free. Ultimately, about half returned to India; about half stayed in Fiji. That’s the setting.

The main character is disgraced police Sergeant Akal Singh, who has been demoted from a sweet post in Hong Kong to the remote isle of Fiji. He’s on a no-win case – the “night prowler” – a guy who looks in windows at night. He’s only been seen by children, who all describe him differently. Singh is truly stuck in limbo, when a Catholic priest makes a stink about a missing “coolie” woman at a plantation owned by a powerful British couple.

“Coolie” was the derogatory term for an Indian worker. The plantation owner is insisting she’s run off with the overseer; the priest is insisting she would never have left her daughter behind. Singh is assigned this thankless case as well, told by his boss to solve the problem without creating political waves. After some investigating in town, Akal heads out with Robert, a doctor who tends to the workers on the plantation, to see what’s actually going on.

The plantation owner will barely look at Singh, and when Robert insists the two men bunk together, they end up in the abandoned overseer’s house as the owner refuses to have an Indian in his home. While this book is set in a different time and place, the racism seems to be the same. Robert’s genuine concern and care for the workers gives Singh an in to meet some of them.

This sounds so grim, doesn’t it? Somehow, it’s not. The story is fast paced, and the unravelling of the missing woman’s life is fascinating. The characters of both Akal and Robert are so charming and appealing that they carry the novel in their capable hands. You’re rooting for Singh to overcome whatever disgrace expelled him from Hong Kong (a disgrace revealed in the course of the novel), and the setting is evocatively written. You can feel the warmth of the jungle. Most moving to me was Singh moving through the coolie “lines” (or housing) at dinner time, with the cooking smells bringing him back home to the Punjab.

The layers of Colonial society are well dissected by the author, and the light she brings to the living conditions of the workers (especially the women) is harsh. As you might expect, the life of an indentured servant on a plantation was not pleasant. Singh is fighting an uphill battle as he struggles to get a hearing for this missing woman, someone basically dismissed by the British colonials as unimportant. To her daughter, the missing woman is not unimportant. She’s her mother. These elemental ties of emotional truth make this novel a powerful as well as an engaging read. This is a wonderful debut.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Soho Press Soho Crime for an advance copy of this historical mystery set in island during the early days of World War I.

I'm not much a fan of American crime procedural books anymore, nor American private detective novels. However set a crime in a different country, or even better a different era, I can't wait to start reading. There is something about crime stories that revel much about the places they are set. Those that are chosen to dispense justice also say a lot, not only by actions, but how the searchers actions are addressed by the people around them. There is something about a person looking for a reason for a crime, or even worse why the people in charge aren't interested that makes for fascinating reading, and teaches much. A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao is the first I hope in a long running series about in outsider in paradise searching for a missing woman that nobody seems to care is gone, or why.

The year is 1914 and while a war is raging in Europe, that will soon grow, Akal Singh is trapped in paradise, or as Akal calls it "this god forsaken island" of Fiji. Akal was once a promising police officer in the British colonial system, who made mistakes in Hong Kong. Akal is given another chance in Fiji, however word of his disgrace has followed him, and no one not his supervisor nor his fellow officers, except for a native Fijian is giving him a chance. Until an indentured woman from India, brought to Fiji to pick sugar cane disappears, a a priest begins to make a ruckus. A ruckus that is happening just as a fact finding group from Britain arrives to look at the conditions that indentured labors are dealing with. Akal accompanied by a British doctor with his own thoughts on the treatment of natives, is sent deep in the island to a plantation that has many secrets, and someone willing to kill to keep them.

I knew nothing about Fiji outside of all the movies that called it an island paradise and the bottled water. I had no real ideas about the British, indentured laborers, nor Sikh policemen, serving outside of India or China. Nor how bad things were these people there. The writing is very good, the story interesting that keeps the pages flipping, with a lot of information about Fiji, India and life under the British. Akal is a bit of a stick in the mud when we readers first met him, but he grows quite a bit, and becomes more comfortable with who he is as the book goes on. Plus he gains empathy as a character, becoming aware of the horrible conditions these indentured people live under, the rules that keep them slaves, and how things probably wouldn't change easily. The supporting cast is quite good, and one can see the hints that are dropped for further adventures, which I really look forward too. Also the afterword is enlightening, as the author discusses the genesis of the book, doing research, and finding out about Indian life in Fiji and Australia. I love hearing where ideas come from, and found this section very interesting.

Again I hope this is the first book in a very long series. The characters are people readers want to know more about, and see what happens to them. The locale and the time is different, and for a small island, a lot of bad things seem to be happening on it. I really can't wait to read more.

Truly engrossing story involving a disgraced Indian cop who has been transferred to Fiji, and the discrimination he faces trying to solve a disappearance and a murder on a plantation in the countryside inhabited by a politician and his wife. Much to learn here about indentured servitude of Indians on Fiji during the early part of the 20th century, and a rousing mystery.

I love historical mysteries; I especially love those with non-western main characters who give me glimpses into their worlds and their ways of thinking. And finally, I do prefer mysteries that still occasionally have moments that make me smile or even laugh out loud. Rao's introductory novel about Sergeant Akal Singh, checks all of these boxes. While the main focus of the book, the disappearance of a young Indian indentured sugar cane worker, is indeed grim and sheds light on a historical reality I knew nothing about, the interactions between recently demoted police sergeant Akal, his Fijian colleague, and a British doctor rebuilding his life by serving others definitely offered moments of levity. Much of the mystery was predictable, although I was pleasingly surprised that the reason for Akal's demotion from Hong Kong to Fiji was not what I'd suspected, and there was one final twist in solving the mystery that I didn't foresee. I am already looking forward to the next Sergeant Singh mystery.

Sergeant Akal Singh is a complex and flawed protagonist, exiled from Hong Kong to the distant island of Fiji where he faces a superior officer who despises him and a murder than no one seems to want solved. The abuses of indentured servitude under British colonial rule are the backdrop to this story, which brings to life a time and place that I knew little about. Nilima Rao has taken care of that, and I will be back for more Akal!

Akal Singh is a Punjabi Sikh, demoted to work in Fiji, in 1914, for having made a fatal error in judgement in Hong Kong, where he worked as a police inspector. His first real case on the island takes him to a sugar plantation where an indentured servant has disappeared. Despite the dismissal of his talents and authority by the plantation owner, who says the woman just ran off, Akal doesn’t believe it’s that simple. No one would walk away from a three-year investment in a five-year indenture. The woman’s extraordinary beauty and a missing overseer have something to do with it. He just doesn’t yet know what.

The novel focuses on some wide societal issues―white colonialism, systemic racism, indentured servitude, and corporate greed―in the context of an excellent story. Akal’s investigation is frustratingly hampered by people with their own agendas, and those, including the police chief, who want the story wrapped up quickly with no negative fall-out. Rao’s attention to detail makes for a vivid read as we can’t help but compare Fiji’s natural beauty to the debilitating poverty, the filth of the servants’ housing, and the wretchedness of these human lives. Rao mirrors some of her self-admitted ‘cultural confusion’ in her chief protagonist. Akal’s charm is heightened by his misplaced appearance on Fiji, amongst white Europeans who respect only other white Europeans, ignore native Fijians, and extend outright hostility to everybody else. His Sikh status affords Akal an inner confidence, but his colour makes him indistinguishable to whites from the native labourers. His calm ability to rise above situations where he is disregarded, ignored, and spoken over as though he isn’t in the room, is what makes him such an endearing and iconic hero. Rao has created a respectful and determined protagonist with whom to venture into the prickly world of racism and cultural identity. More please.

This is a stunning, gorgeously written and developed story. The setting is exotic, the characters are intriguing, and although the subject matter (indentured servitude) is grim, Rao shoots arrows of quiet humor throughout that keep the story balanced. Readers are in the hands of a master storyteller here.

Young police sergeant Akal Singh has blotted his record in the Hong Kong police department with a regrettable naivety that led to his downfall from a prized upward career climb. He manages to keep his job but is sent to the far off post of Fiji as punishment. Author Rao develops a fascinating character in Singh, who is charmingly depreciative, dejected at his plummeted prospects, homesick, and yet, persistent in his duties. In this first story, Singh encounters the mystery of a dead indentured woman, the resolution of which is hampered by the power of colonial control there. Singh does not give up his pursuit of justice. The plot presents a mystery that is puzzling and powerful.

The time period is 1914, and world war, though distant in Fiji, is slowly making its presence known. The time period, the Fijian setting, the characters - all are rendered with an easy, evocative prose. All of the characters are multidimensional and fascinating. Rao's plotting is impeccable, keeping the reader turning the pages.

I look forward to more stories of Sergeant Singh. Splendid writing!

This book is great for readers who enjoy Sujata Massey' Perveen Mistry or Ovidia Yu ' s Crown Colonies mysteries.

Historical fiction mystery with a unique setting but slow moving plot. This title is rich with historical detail and context but at times the actual mystery gets lost in the shuffle.

A disgraced Indian police officer stationed in Hong Kong has been sent to a backwater as punishment - Fiji. There he frets about how to redeem himself while getting frustrated by a not-very-exciting criminal investigation into a peeping tom. But then he has the chance to investigate the disappearance of a woman laborer who has vanished just as an Indian official is about to visit the island to assess the working and living conditions for indentured workers, dispatched across the globe to provide for the British colonial enterprise. I found Akal, the protagonist, a bit of a stick in the mud, more concerned with his career than with his cases, but as the story and the investigation proceeded he was beginning to develop a sense of justice as he witnessed the plight of Indians trapped in an unjust, exploitive system. That, for me, was the most fascinating aspect of this book - not just the unusual setting, but the focus on the Indian diaspora that was used after the end of the slave trade as the colonial project rolled along, a subject I've never seen addressed in crime fiction before.

This was a good start to what I hope will become a series, following a semi-disgraced Indian police sergeant who's been sent to Fiji. His goal is to make it back to Hong Kong, and to do so, he'll need to solve big cases, though the one that's been handed to him is politically fraught. An Indian woman (one of the indentured workers on one of Fiji's many plantations) has disappeared, and it's Akal's job is give the case a cursory look and not stir the pot. Of course, the case is far more simple than it seems, leaving Akal with a moral quandry on his hands. I liked the setting, Fiji is not a place that features a lot in historical books, though with the focus being on rural areas and plantations, I hope future books have more chances to give us detailed glimpses into the setting. Akal is a character that i'm not entirely sold on, he waffles and is often focused on his own issues, which is fair given the circumstances, but did detract from the mystery at times. The mystery itself was easy to follow, though I wish the twist was a bit better and the investigation was better detailed throughout the book. Overall, I'm interested enough to keep reading the series, and feel like this book was a good set up for future books.

A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao was a delight to read and I will recommend this book. I learned a lot about an unknown (to me) part of the history of Fiji. The police characters were well drawn and likeable and I can't wait for another story of Akal Singh.