Shipwreck in Fiji by Nilima Rao
Rising star in global crime fiction Nilima Rao has delivered on her promise of a second installment of her charming, arresting historical mystery series about Police Sergeant Akal Singh.
It debuted in 2024 with the award-winning, critically lauded A Disappearance in Fiji. Her current novel, A Shipwreck in Fiji, delves deeper into his background, providing insights into what motivates protagonist Sergeant Akal Singh while introducing additional supporting characters.
Sgt. Singh is more comfortable in his job as a police detective, although his exile to the remote British Crown Colony of Fiji still chafes. He profoundly regrets the momentary lapse into unprofessional conduct during his previous assignment with the Criminal Investigation Division of the distinguished Hong Kong Police Department that nearly cost him his career.
Investigator in Exile
This tall and turbaned, observant Sikh, frequently seen ducking under doorways, was born in India to a prominent family who could not understand why their well-educated son had chosen to work in such an inferior, low-status profession as a police investigator.
His mother wants nothing more than for her clever and cultured son to return home to an arranged, suitable marriage, provide her with grandchildren and become a respectable businessman or attorney as befits his education and status. However, he enjoys the challenging police work and retains hope that by solving a sufficient number of cases, he will be permitted to return to Hong Kong.
His immediate superior, the Inspector General of the Totogo Police Station in Suva, has become less suspicious and more tolerant of his underling following his success in a previous case. Solving a puzzling murder as well as exposing the exploitation and abuse of plantation workers provided a coup for this precinct.
Fiji and the Great War
The year is 1915, and the world is at war. Fiji is thousands of miles away from the battlefields at the front, but there have been unsubstantiated reports of sightings of a suspected German crew, possibly from a shipwrecked vessel.
Sgt. Singh and his energetic, wise-cracking fellow officer, Constable Taviti Tukana, are assigned to the neighboring island of Ovalau to investigate. Taviti’s Uncle Ratu Teleni is the chief of his village. Like Akal’s parents, his fervent wish is for his nephew to quit the police force and take his rightful place as his eventual successor in the tribal hierarchy.
Chief Teleni is a conflicted subject of the British realm whose primary loyalties remain firmly rooted in the precedential Fijian tribal traditions. It is difficult for a man accustomed to ruling absolutely to be subject to a distant crown with courts of law dispensing slow justice when previously he had solely determined and administered punishment for crimes committed on tribal lands.
More Complicated Missions
Sergeant Singh is uncomfortable with his secondary assignment: serving as chaperone and tour guide for the editor of Fiji Times, Hugh Clancy’s sister, Mary, and beautiful niece Katherine, who are visiting from England. They wish to explore islands, including Levuka, where a store owner has reported Germans purchasing supplies at night.
The third assignment is to check on and supervise the sole current police officer on Ovalua: an inexperienced, excitable teenage constable who, at 18, has not yet mastered the practice of discretion. The Fijians and Indians do not mix socially with British citizens except on rare occasions on the cricket grounds. Dr. Robert Holmes, the local physician and police coroner, is a notable exception.
Akal Singh had already been censured in Hong Kong as a result of his attraction to a lovely white woman jewel thief, and is made rather anxious about Katherine’s friendly and inquisitive nature. She is determined to prove herself to be an investigative journalist in order to work for a newspaper.
Unpredictable and Highly Entertaining
The action heats up quickly when they arrive and learn that the unpopular shopkeeper had been found brutally murdered in his unkempt, unsuccessful and ill-equipped shop. Against advice, he had established it too far from the town center, making it inconveniently located for the indentured Indian plantation workers.
Next, a crew of six sailors purporting to be Norwegian is detained by Chief Teleni for the criminal offense of killing, cooking and eating a tortoise found on his beach. Unbeknownst to the hungry men, this is a capital crime as the turtles and tortoises are to be consumed only by the tribal chief and his immediate family.
This threatens to blossom into an international incident when it is determined the men are indeed German and should be treated as prisoners of war.
And there is more excitement to come! A Shipwreck in Fiji is beautifully written, unpredictable and highly entertaining with an unanticipated villain.
Immersed in Real History
Author Nilima Rao is a descendant of Indian ancestors who, in their search for advancement opportunities, relocated to Fiji to work in the cane fields. Her family moved to North Queensland, Australia, when she was three.
She has continued her impressive in-depth research about the Indian population, additionally providing factual information about the indigenous Fijian people known as the iTaukei people. Through Constable Taviti and his extended family, she has been able to effectively bring more attention to the indigenous iTaukei as major characters in A Shipwreck in Fiji.
History is well commingled with mystery. The author has utilized the actual dates and details of the German raiding party to suit her plot and accurately reports newspaper accounts that had previously been suppressed by government orders of the capture of Count Felix von Luckner (1881–1966)with his small crew and their subsequent imprisonment in New Zealand.
The true story of this charismatic Count is the stuff of legend. Contrary to his family’s wishes, as a young man, he went to sea as an ordinary seaman on sailing vessels, eventually rising to the rank of Captain. The privateer SMS Seeadler (Sea Eagle) was originally a Scottish-built 19th-century, three-masted windjammer known as Pass of Balmaha that sailed under the British flag.
After capture by an Imperial German submarine, the steel-hulled vessel was modernized with a concealed powerful engine, two 105 mm deck guns, two machine guns, and renamed, thereby becoming a marine raider privateer. Shortly after the Seeadler sailed, a British inspection party halted the vessel. Being fluent in Norwegian (as well as French, English and his native German), the wily Captain Luckner convinced them this sailing vessel was a neutral trade ship.
Gripping Historical Mystery
For 225 days, Luckner commanded the ship, which captured, plundered and sank 15 ships in the Atlantic and Pacific. Most of the ships surrendered without a fight or casualties due to Luckner’s brilliantly deceptive tactics, earning him the nickname “Der Seeteufel (the Sea Devil).
Celebrated as an honorable gentleman for his merciful treatment of enemy crews, the sole casualty of his voyages was an accidental death. Tossed by a tsunami on August 2, 1917, the vessel smashed onto a reef in French Polynesia and was destroyed. The crew and their prisoners were unharmed, with the ship’s remains burned to conceal her presence from the enemy.
As Nilima Rao has written in A Shipwreck in Fiji, Luckner and five of his men subsequently set sail for distant Fiji in one of the Seeadler’s open lifeboats. In a feat reminiscent of Captain William Bligh’s celebrated 3,618-mile successful lifeboat navigation with 18 crew members from HMS Bounty in 1789, Luckner voyaged an astounding 3,400 miles before being captured near Ovalua and imprisoned for the duration of the war on an island possession of New Zealand.
Post-WWI, the Count became a notable author and popular worldwide speaker. Despite his later association with the Nazi party, he remains a revered, though controversial, war hero.
Readers are left to hope for a swift return of Sergeant Akal Singh and his amiable companions for another gripping historical mystery. This is, without exaggeration, one of the best new series created in recent years.
About Nilima Rao:
Nilima is a Fijian Indian Australian, and she’s always referred to herself as “culturally confused.” She has since learned that we are all confused in some way, has been published on the topic by Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service, and she now feels better about the whole thing. When not writing, she can be found wrangling data (the dreaded day job) or wandering around Melbourne laneways in search of the next new wine bar. Her first novel, A Disappearance in Fiji, was an Amazon top 20 debut for 2023, and the second in the series, A Shipwreck in Fiji, is out now.
