Moonrise, Sunset (A Mask Noir Title)

By Gopal Baratham

Hours after agreeing to marry How Kum Menon, Vanita Sundram is murdered while asleep in her fianc?'s arms. More killings follow, and the reluctant How Kum is soon embroiled in the police investigation, only to find himself dealing with an unlikely brigade of self-proclaimed 'experts': his drunken Uncle Oscar with his underworld links, an American psycho-sexual profiler and his matronly psychic sidekick, and a Hindu holy-man, who plans to dissuade Vanita's soul from uniting with the Universal Spirit just long enough to reveal the identity of the murderer... A corrosive picture of contemporary Singapore, a hitherto placid economic miracle zone whose image conceals an older network of corruption and intrigue.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852425016
• ISBN13: 9781852425012
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Singapore Unveiled

It's always cool to be able to check out a writer from a relatively obscure country, and Baratham's Singaporan whodunit is no exception. How Kum Menon (a Chinese/Malay) goes to the park with his fiancee and wakes up with her dead in his arms, the same night as several other murders in the same park. From there on it's a fairly straightforward investigation by D'Cruz a thorny Chinese/Indian policeman, and their mutual Arab lawyer friend Jafar. What quickly comes to the fore is the extreme multi-ethnicity and multi-culturalism of Singapore's inhabitants, as various cultural traits and prejudices prove important to the murder mystery. In the end, the culprit isn't a shocker, but How Kum's reaction is, and the reader will come away with a nice sketch of Singapore.