Meade: Death Over Her Shoulder

They know him merely as Ismael, the native detective from Jahore. Subtle and alert but not as bloated as the sleuths of the Western world, he’s urged to solve a triangle of murders hovering over Nancy Reynolds, the New England girl traveling in the Far East. He practices his art—and, indeed, sleuthing is still an art—among kampongs, sarongs, wayongs, tigers, rubber trees and in jungles you find in Death Over Her Shoulder, by Dorothy Cole Meade. And his task begins where one life ends. For Nancy, upon thrusting lights into the main bungalow of an isolated Semang Rubber Estate in Malaya, finds the murdered body of the woman who was to have been her host. Suspicion clutches an entire plantation and a small group of white individuals is especially shocked. The background lends an intriguing touch; moreover, there’s much suspense and more than a bit of dexterity in the telling. (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1939)

Additional

First published in 1939.