Tag Archives: Barbara Ismail

In My Hands Today…

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Princess Play (Kain Songhet Mysteries #2) – Barbara Ismail

18477981Kelantanese kain songket trader and amateur sleuth Mak Cik Maryam is plunged once again into the shadowy world of murder, hatred and madness when a fellow market woman is killed after a successful main puteri (princess play) curing ceremony. Sorcery is suspected, though Maryam believes there are sufficient human suspects to investigate before considering the supernatural. Solving the crime requires the unravelling of a knot of family secrets, madness and familiar spirits. Once again Mak Cik Maryam brings Kelantan common sense, jewellery and an instinct for truth to shed light on a situation which appears at first to be insoluble. Follow Malaysia’s favourite female detective in Princess Play, the second Kelantanese murder case in the Kain Songket Mysteries series

In My Hands Today…

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Shadow Play (Kain Songhet Mysteries #1) – Barbara Ismail

15810852“Shadow Play” is the first in the series of “Kain Songket Mysteries” set in the northern state of Kelantan, Malaysia during the 1970s.

Mak Cik Maryam, a smart and take-charge kain songket (silk) 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.