Inspector Nadra's investigation is filled with gaps that made the whole thing creepier than it was, as with the whole novel, filled to the brim with dark, abrasive and brooding, atmosphere almost "Film Gris" rather than "noir" or the typical "thriller" that cop novel tends to be. Inspector Dominic Wong, goes about with a homicide case, turned cases as in multiple, while Inspector Nadra Sunai's investigation is on child kidnapping she witnessed and later on caught another. The novel starts purely as a grounded crime/detective/police procedural story where our protagonists are drop head first, or in the case of Inspector Nadra, stumbled upon their case, that as they went on, trying to solve cases that you expected to be connected or are actively looking for connections but they aren't, at least not in the minuscule scale that they are presented in. The blurb does its best to keep whether the supernatural elements are concrete or just folktale superstition, which I could go either way with seeing that I enjoy something on both line it could fall into True Detective territory which were laden with Weird Fiction trappings but remain grounded in reality or it could fall into The Ring/The Empty Man's category which does have investigation but are full blown horror with the later being another Weird Fiction/Lovecraft-esque inspired. And while they aren't related in anyway, aside from being another novel published as the winner of The first Fixi Novo's Malaysian Novel Contest, I've also reviewed Toyols 'r' Us which I find funny seeing that both are Crime Novel with Supernatural elements or "supernatural"-esque element(?-tbd) in this one. Maybe I don't read a lot of Malaysian fiction, outside of the Fixi Novo offerings, I don't think there are many police-crime thriller-mystery, at least in English.
Their beliefs and principles are challenged when the quest for justice leads them down a mystifying path.Īnd my interest was piqued.
The case gets another twist when the kidnapper leaves an envelope addressed to her, with a cryptic message inside.īoth inspectors suffer wrenching personal losses in their attempts to get closure. Nadra sees a white-haired man together with the girl, but her partner doesn’t. Inspector Nadra Sunai’s ordeal begins when a child is abducted right under her nose. The nickname stuck because many believed there was a supernatural element in the cases. Inspector Dominic Wong was part of a task force to catch Shadowman, who started abducting and murdering children a decade earlier.
Published as the winner of the second Fixi Novo's Malaysian Novel Contest, Not A Monster by Chua Kok Yee is, as the novel blurb shows
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