Shadow Play (2012) is the first in the series of "Kain Songket* Mysteries", introducing a female amateur sleuth Mak Cik* Maryam from Malaysia's northeast corner, Kelantan (the "Land of Lightning"), during the 1970s.
Paperback: Mak Cik Maryam, a smart and take-charge kain songket trader in Kota Bharu Central Market, discovers a murder in her own backyard, shattering the bucolic village world she thought surrounded her.
While the new Chief of Police, a pleasant young man from Ipoh whose mother's admonitions about the wiles of Kelantanese girls* still ring in his ears, wrestles with the bewildering local dialect, Maryam steps up to solve the mystery herself.
Her investigation brings her into the closed world of the wayang kulit Shadow Play theater and the lives of its performers - a world riven by rivalries and black magic.
Trapped in a tangle of jealousy, Maryam struggles to make sense of the crime in spite of the spells sent to keep her from secrets long buried and lies woven to shield the guilty.
About the author: Barbara Ismail spent several years in Kelantan in the 1970s and '80s, living in Kampong Dusun and Pengkalan Cepa, studying Wayang Siam* and the Kelantanese dialect. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, and is originally from Brooklyn, New York. She intended Shadow Play to be about Kelantan's finest: market women with enormous sense, courage and confidence as well as to give a sense of Kelantan and its people.
Shadow Play is Barbara's first book in the Kain Songket Mysteries to be followed by Princess Play, Songbird, Moon Kite, Western Chanting and Little Axe. Shadow Play is available to buy in most English bookstores like Waterstones, Blackwell's, Heffers, W H Smith (out of stock), online on Amazon (the UK and USA) and of course in Malaysian bookstores.
Glossary (taken from Shadow Play):
*Kain Songket: The queen of Kelantan's textiles made of silk with gold or silver geometric patterns woven into it.
*Mak Cik: Auntie, a polite form of address for an older woman
*Wayang Siam: The Kelantan shadow play, performed with incised leather puppets, which throw shadows on a screen.
*Kelantanese girls: Kelantanese women are famous for their looks and their proclivity for magic, a reputation jealously stoked by those less spirited, less assertive, less active in business than Kelantan's daughters.
Rating: 5/5
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