Shadow Play

In this cozy mystery series opener, a 1970s Malaysian Miss Marple’s murder investigation sheds light on the darker side of a local theater.

Mak Chik Maryam is one of the middle-aged “aunties” who sell batiks in the local market and offer advice on any subject that might cross their paths. Of course, not everyone is grateful for the opinion. The new police chief, for example, seems to imagine that he could figure out this terrible murder on his own, without Maryam’s help. She soon puts him straight and sets out sleuthing. But solving the murder will take Maryam into some hidden corners of a community she thought she knew well. It will introduce her to some ugly aspects of the Shadow Play—the traditional Malyasian theater and the performers who specialize in it. And it will require her to acknowledge that jealousy, rivalries and even black magic run like a dark river through a world she had imagined was simple and sunlit.

“For lovers of armchair tourism and detective stories, Barbara Ismail has created a winner in her series about Mak Chik Maryam.” —The Straits Times (Malaysia)