Singapore University Campus, 1980. Professor Bernard Fox is found hanging from his overhead fan. Everything points to suicide except for one thing: if Bernard hanged himself, how did he turn on the fan?

The autopsy shows the professor had consumed enough tranquillizers to sedate but not to kill. But if he were sedated and murdered, why would his murderer turn on the fan? The turning fan prompts an investigation takes us into the turbulent history of Singapore’s birth as a nation, uncovers a search for World War II treasure and exposes a second-generation thirst for revenge.

A murder mystery wrapped in history and unfolded within a love story.

Robert Cooper is a British subject who has lived overseas most of his life in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Laos. He received a PhD in Economic Anthropology after two years with Hmong villagers in Northern Thailand and Laos. Following publication of Resource Scarcity and the Hmong Response (Singapore University Press, 1984), he was elected Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Robert left an academic career in anthropology that included lectureships at Singapore, Chulalongkorn and Chiang Mai universities to join the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He served with the UN in Laos, Geneva, Malawi, the Philippines, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia. In 2000, he became Head of the British Trade Office to Laos. He spent a year in Vietnam advising the government on poverty reduction, before returning to live and write in Vientiane, where he owns the bookshop Book-Café Vientiane and works on increasing literacy among young Lao. In addition to English, he speaks French, Lao, Malay/Indonesian and Thai.

Robert is the author of CultureShock! Thailand and companion volumes Thais Mean Business, Thailand Beyond the Fringe, and CultureShock! Laos. He has also written cultural guides to Bahrain, Bhutan, Croatia, and Indonesia, and three novels set in Asia and the UK.

An intriguing murder mystery with twists and turns, and sub-plots that keeps one reading to the end.