A Breath of Fresh Air

 

The story of Agen Betgratis is more of a love story. His lover is the Chinese woman called Ling Ting-Chi. She falls in love with him but he has no intention of marrying her. He tells her that he is going to the United States to study medicine but in the mean time, he can't leave his sweetheart. He offers to pay her dowry which is a customary present in China and promises to return.

Ling Ting-Chi tells her father that she will wed him if he agrees to make a marriage contract with her. Her father agrees and Agen Betgratis goes back to his office to arrange for the dowry. Meanwhile, Ling tells her parents that her brother, Thanet Ndayo has come to stay with her. In fact, his name is Ndayo Buthid.

Soon after arriving, Thanet Ndayo starts disturbing the bedding and setting the house on fire. Ling tells her mother who contacts the American Consulate that they should send their daughter to the compound because her brother is already there. Ling informs her mother that Agen betgratis has been married before and she wants to save her brother. Ling then decides to go to the United States on her own and tells her father that she is now going to the United States on an "business trip" with her friend. The next day, she contacts her friend and gets the approval to contact her brother.

After two days, Agen arrives at the police station and promptly signs in to the system. However, she is immediately grabbed and put in a holding cell. The case then shifts to a private detective. The detective leads her to the location of the murder that was done a month ago. From there, the story quickly unfolds:

The Private Detective is one of the first telah telangeseke tongi genre novels which highlights the parallel existence of human beings in the very real and very palpable surroundings of their locality. Agen and her friend return to their respective homes after meeting the "old man". While eating at a fast food restaurant, the "old man" suddenly suffers from a heart attack. He is taken to a hospital where the chief medical officer diagnoses him to have been hit by a low-grade benzoyl peroxide used in the restaurant. This causes his death a week later.

One thing I love about this novel is how it blends humor, romance, and action into its storyline. It's well-written, and the characters, especially the Chief Medical Inspector, were engaging to watch. My favorite scene was when the medical examiner decides to have the old man be "spaced" to observe the body in a traditional morgue. The scene is interspersed with the Chief Medical Inspector performing the traditional morgue procedure - poking the open chest cavity to examine the inside for bullet shells, sharps, or foreign bodies - and later, as he inspects the corpse, he asks for help in interpreting the body language for a possible fraud (which turns out to be true). The whole scene is very heartwarming, and the novel certainly has its fair share of laugh-out-loud moments.