If you have not tried them yet, get onto the excellent Inspector Singh series by Shamini Flint, a new runner in the burgeoning field of crime fiction set in exotic locales and featuring unprepossessing-looking overweight local detectives.
This, the second in the series (with a third in the wings), uses the bombing of the Sari Club in Denpasar and anti-terrorist activities as a background for a murder investigation. The dishevelled wheezing Singapore-based Sikh, Inspector Singh, is joined, much to his irritation and discomfort, by Bronwyn, a much larger and even more overweight, friendly, backslapping Australian Federal policewoman, who earns his respect in a final heartrending twist.
Here, Flint’s considerable political, legal and local savvy is more smoothly integrated into the story than in the first, A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder. In the next, Inspector Singh finally gets to work at home as he investigates The Singapore School of Villainy. Intelligent and well-written, the Inspector Singh series is definitely worth a read.