A Little Flight Reading

Icons of England, Inspector Singh Investigates the Singapore School of Villainy

From the cover of Icons Of England, edited by Bill Bryson

Icons of England, Inspector Singh Investigates the Singapore School of Villainy

Icons of England
Edited by Bill Bryson
(Random House, $19.95)
THE ever-busy Bill Bryson has collected a wealth of short essays on what makes England so, well, English, from country stiles and cider farms to village cricket and the damnable climate. The list of contributors is long indeed, from popular plantsman Alan Titchmarsh and musician Bryan Ferry to the peripatetic Michael Palin and television presenter Jonathan Dimbleby. It's a surprise to find actor and director Kevin Spacey among the lineup; obviously his tenure with the Old Vic has given him honorary pommy status and herein he extols the pleasures of a boating holiday. It's all very Ratty and Mole, with a nice dash of the eccentric. Many of the essays are whimsical (I enjoyed reading about musician Eric Clapton's boyhood in Surrey, also the county of my youth) and Bryson, himself an honorary Englishman, must have had huge fun putting together such a jolly good assembly.

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Inspector Singh Investigates the Singapore School of Villainy
By Shamini Flint
(Piatkus, $22.99)
SINGAPORE'S Inspector Singh is everything Hercule Poirot is not. He's dishevelled, overweight and sweaty, his clothing frequently spotted with the curry stains of Mrs Singh's excellent cooking. But like Agatha Christie's Poirot, and her village snoop Miss Marple, Singh has an instinct for solving crimes that would otherwise foil the local constabulary.

In this third outing in what looks like a continuing series, the detective is at home in Singapore and has been assigned a corporate murder case, a rare event for this low-crime tropical enclave. Shamini Flint moves things along at a cracking pace.

This is good in-flight reading; pop it into the bag alongside the latest title in the Botswana-set No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith or Anne Zouroudi's most recent novel starring Hermes Diaktoros, the Athenian detective who's as portly as Singh but his dapper costumes have more in common with Poirot. The little Belgian detective with the superior "little grey cells" would have been intrigued, I feel sure, to meet his 21st-century rivals.