Dorothy Cole Meade

Murder in Malaya Dorothy Cole Meade

Fatal Shadows (1933): In the early morning hours after the natives' frenetic celebration of the Sultan's birthday, beautiful Ailsa Brownley is found brutally slain by a Malay kris outside the Government Rest House at Johor Bahru, capital of the state of Johor, British Malaya. Local officials would dearly love to pin the guilt for this ghastly crime on a native inhabitant and quickly write it off, but it soon becomes all too troublingly clear that there is no shortage of British and American visitors who wanted the alluring and amoral Ailsa dead, either on account of her fatal beauty or her furtive scheming. In over his head in a murder case concerning colonials, Office Campbell turns to his canny native Malayan assistant, Ismael, to delve into the mysteries of human desire and uncover the shocking truth.

Death Over Her Shoulder (1939): A miasma of murder envelops Nancy Reynolds, a beautiful New Englander alone and in trouble in British Malaya! Arriving at an isolated rubber plantation during a heavy downpour, Nancy enters the dark bungalow of the kindly woman, Lydia Bosworth, whom she hopes might help her--only to find Lydia dead on the sofa, most foully murdered. Everywhere the police look, they find only secrets and lies, by no means the least of which concern the frightened and desperate Nancy herself. Cleary this is another case for the canny police investigator Ismael, "one of the smartest detectives in the East." As the bodies pile up on the plantation like bales of rubber and Nancy herself is perilously menaced, Ismael relentlessly tracks the bloody trail of a remorseless killer.

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