Monday 15 June 2009

Inspector Singh is in the house

Regular readers of this blog (yes, both of you) might remember my review of Shamini Flint's crime novel Criminal Minds back in November. Although I didn't like the title and packaging, the murder mystery itself was very entertaining: it had wit, suspense and some colourful Malaysian characters. I ended by saying:

The UK publisher, bless them, has re-titled this book Inspector Singh Investigates – A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder, and it will be re-released next year. I look forward to reading it again, with the inevitably nicer cover.

Well, I was telling you no lie. The UK edition of the book is already out (check out this short review from The Guardian), and it has reached our shores:


Criminal Minds was published under her own company (registered in Singapore, where she lives) and now that a bigger international publisher has the rights, she can no longer sell the first version. So despite my mild knetch about its cover, I am happy that I not only own but wrote about a book that is now destined to be a collector's edition.

There will be promo activities in KL, I gather. You can join her Facebook fan-page to find out more. I wish the Inspector Singh series, as well as her various other books, all the best!

2 comments:

Eggy said...

much better book cover - has a chiaroscuro feel about it, like the detective film scores of the 60s (just caught "victim" at annexe and the lettering and typeface here reminded me of the melodramatic music in that film).

no. 3 fan

Anonymous said...

it so happens that i'm reading it right now. didn't know it was the same book as criminal minds.

yeah, the repackaging...
the title is an obvious reference to seicho matsumoto's classic crime novels. and singh's silhouette in the cover has to be an homage to hitchcock's famous side profile.

- burhan