Sleuthing in the Solomons

BY PHIL FITZPATRICK

Devil-Devil by G W Kent is published by Constable and Robinson in the United Kingdom (2011).  I bought my copy from Dymocks for Aus$19.95 ($7.99 from Amazon, Kindle edition)

WHEN YOU LOOK AT A MAP of the South Pacific you can see a neat chain of islands stretching between Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

From the east and travelling northwest there are the big islands of Santa Cruz, San Cristobal, Guadalcanal, Malaita, Russell, Isabel, New Georgia, Choiseul and Bougainville.  The history, romance and intrigue that this eclectic mix of nomenclature conjures up are collectively known as the Solomon Islands.

Apart from the big islands there are nearly a thousand others.  The people are mostly Melanesian, like their brothers and sisters to the west and southeast; although there are some Polynesian islands, like Sikaiana, to the north.

The Solomon Islands was half-heartedly administered by the British from the 1920s until it gained its independence on 7 July 1978 - encouraged by and nearly three years after Papua New Guinea.

The incongruity in the equation is, of course, Bougainville, which became part of Papua New Guinea.  No matter how you turn the map around Bougainville looks a lot more comfortable as part of the Solomon Islands.

G W Kent’s novel, Devil-Devil, is set in 1960, just as anti-colonialism is beginning to foment.  There has already been one anti-British-come-cargo cult uprising on Malaita and the languid expatriates throughout the island chain vaguely realise that their days are coming to an end. 

That takes a while though; self- government and independence had a longer and lazier gestation in the Solomon Islands than it did in Papua New Guinea - working up the enthusiasm was obviously hard work there.

Some of the problems in this extended run-up period had similarities in Papua New Guinea, not the least being a disparate collection of widely dispersed tribes.

The main points of friction in all this independence preamble (and aftermath) are the islands of Guadalcanal and Malaita.  Malaita was a target of Queensland blackbirders collecting labourers for the cane fields in the late 1800s. 

The well-travelled Malaitans are smart people who still dominate the public service and business sectors and have a large presence in Honiara, the capital on Guadalcanal.  This friction between the Guales and Malaitans later precipitated the troubles of the 1990s.

The main character in the novel is Sergeant of Police, Ben Kella.  He is a well-educated Lau Malaitan with a contrary streak that upsets his dithering British superiors.  He is also a traditional aofia or peacemaker.  To many of his own people he is simply a “white blackfella”.

Sent from Honiara to Malaita to locate a missing American anthropologist he begins to stumble across a series of murders, both past and present, which somehow seem to be linked. 

He also stumbles across a supporting cast of diverse characters; the grizzled Australian planter/trader, a charismatic chief, a headmaster with a secret, a crooked Chinese businessman and an unconventional Catholic nun from America called Sister Conchita (she took the name because she thought she was going to be posted to Mexico).

To me this soiree of characters seems to have been plucked off the shelves of the used detective novel store.  The author might also have picked up a bargain-basement narrative and plot in the same shop.

Using island intuition, knowledge of custom and an acute deductive mind Ben Kella begins to connect the dots.  Along the way he unearths the usual suspects, greed and avarice.

Keith Jackson, take note; for eight years the author ran a school broadcasting service in the Solomon Islands.  He was also an education advisor to the South Pacific Commission.  This is his fifteenth novel.

The blurb on the back cover of the book says, “Move over Botswana – the Solomon Islands are the new place to be!”  The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency it is not; Alexander McCall Smith has got nothing to worry about.

Nevertheless, and because of its setting, it is an interesting novel which will ring a few bells for Papua New Guineans and Australian expatriates. 

The author tells us that the people in the backwaters of the Solomon Islands used to regard Port Moresby as the big smoke and looked forward to the international flights from there.  Imagine that!

Comments

[Martin Hadlow]

Phil's book review also serves to highlight the role in which radio can support education, especially in nations where remoteness, funding constraints and other factors work to limit learning opportunities.

As a former broadcasting manager in both Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, I very much regret the demise of the schools broadcasting services in each country.

Keith can comment further on the PNG system, although I well recall a chalkie, with whom I shared a two-man donga in Kerema, telling me how he missed the comprehensive broadcasts which value-added so much to daily classroom lessons.

Up until the 1970s, the (then) Solomon Islands Broadcasting Service (SIBS) also operated an excellent, curriculum-linked system which brought much needed material directly into schools as an adjunct to the face-to-face efforts provided by the teacher.

Often, the SI teachers had relatively little pre-service training and only a modicum of in-service support, especially those living in villages scattered across the more remote islands.

The radio broadcasts not only helped them to bring a new dimension to lessons and a broader and more diverse vista on the world to students in the classroom, they were also a learning experience for the teachers.

Not only that, a daily transmission from Honiara gave teachers the knowledge that they were, indeed, part of a national education system, and that the Government cared for them and valued their work.

Without this inspiration, remote area teachers operated in a relative vacuum and, for many, it must have seemed that their huge and valiant efforts went unrewarded.

To my way of thinking, the demise of schools broadcasting has been a tragedy. Nowadays, school teachers in remote parts of Solomon Islands are lucky to get chalk, or books, or even a pay cheque on time. The situation in PNG is probably similar.

[Leonard Roka]

I, during the Bougainville crisis, criss-crossed the Bougainville Strait against the dirty Australia-backed PNG blockade of my Solomon island of Bougainville - with a gun.

You make me proud with these words, 'No matter how you turn the map around Bougainville looks a lot more comfortable as part of the Solomon Islands'.

Truly Bougainville is a colony of the rapacious PNG state. Our duty as true Solomonese is to realise irredentism.

We will do that, no matter what, our island must be free from aliens.

This is our common vision as relegated Bougainvilleans.

[Martin Hadlow]

Or $7.99 on Kindle from Amazon.