21 immortals Inspector Mislan and the Yee Sang murders

In an upscale Kuala Lumpur neighborhood, the Tham family's bodies are discovered, arranged in a horrific tableau around a traditional New Year's feast. If this were an American procedural, the story would shift quickly into serial-killer territory, but in Kuala Lumpur, Inspector Mislan Latif turns to secret societies, the lords of Malaysia's underworld. Fashion mogul Robert Tham, it turns out, informed on his secret-society bosses in the 1995 sweep that sent scores of gang members to prison. Puzzling clues emerge: the victims were killed with cyanide gas pumped into their car, which security cameras reveal was returned to Tham's office by a mysterious woman. And the police department's notoriously "connected" brass is simultaneously demanding the case's rapid resolution and obstructing Mislan's investigation. This English-language debut of an award-winning series takes readers to a darker, edgier Malaysia than that of Shamini Flint's Inspector Singh cozies; fans of John Burdett and Timothy Hallinan will be drawn to the gritty KL streets and to Mislan's disregard for politics as he pursues justice.

Noor, a former Malaysian police officer, does a stellar job of translating his experience into fiction in his nuanced debut, a series launch. Kuala Lumpur Insp. Mislan Latif is confronted with a high-profile and baffling triple homicide. The corpses of a family of three--a father, mother, and 10-year-old son--have been found in their home in an affluent part of the city. There are no obvious signs of violence, and the bodies were posed at the dinner table, set with a traditional Chinese New Year meal. When the adult male is identified as Robert Tham, a wealthy and renowned clothing designer, the pressure to solve the case intensifies. An autopsy determines that the Tham family were poisoned by hydrogen cyanide gas and then embalmed. Mislan learns that the ostensibly respectable Robert was once the leader of a secret society known as the 21 Immortals, who may have cooperated with the authorities against his fellow immortals years before. The inspector pursues the truth relentlessly in the face of crooked superiors and trigger-happy colleagues. Fans of honest cops working in a rigged system are in for a treat. (Aug.)