Sergeant Ben Kella
and Sister Conchita have their work cut out for them in this
third adventure. This time it looks as though a professional
assassin, or killman, is at large on the Solomons and he has
already killed three people. One of them is the enigmatic
Papa Noah, leader of a religious sect and owner of an ark
filled with animals. There is a woman from an American university
visiting, recording songs dating from the war years, who seems
to be getting too close to the truth. Is the killman a Japanese
left over from the war, or is it all something to do with
the Polynesian island of Tikopia?
This series is likened to the Botswana novels of Alexander
McCall Smith and broadly this might be true. They are both
sets of detective stories set in exotic places not usually
featured in novels and they are both very good novels. Apart
from that you can rest assured that there is nothing of the
copycat here, and trying to find any mystery series that reminds
me of these excellent novels has me stumped. This is all to
the good, for true originality is all too rare. They give
a tantalizing glimpse into a vanished world, a time when the
Solomon Islands were at a crossroads with one foot in the
time before, another in the white colonial era and a third
looking towards an independent future. There is also, as readers
of this series have come to expect, an involved and thought-provoking
plot with a modicum of humor. I particularly admire the way
the author manages to convey the feeling that almost anything
could happen in such a place without resorting to the supernatural.
This is currently my favorite historical mystery series and
the best thing I have read this year so far. May it run for
many books and even inspire others to pen quality novels set
in unusual and interesting places.
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