Review: Souless by Rozlan Mohd Noor

Synopsis: Early morning in Jalan Alor, one of the city’s red-light and tourist hotspots controlled by the Triads. A junkie’s scream of horror and the commotion that follows brings down the police, first a patrol car, and then, after what the officers see, Inspector Mislan and Detective Sergeant Johan from Special Investigations. The body in the duffle bag had been dumped in a back alley. The junkie who found the bag thought he’d hit the jackpot. The rats probably thought the same. But it was acid that took the young woman’s face and burned the flesh on her fingers, and something unknown caused the marks on her skin of what appears to be torture.With no papers, no fingerprints, no face, and a body removed from the original crime scene, Mislan must build his case and find who committed this atrocity. The woman’s body seems to have been a message. But by whom? For whom?

This unsettling case will take Inspector Mislan and his team from Kuala Lumpur to the Land of Smiles, and from a dark alley to the dark web and a place where humans are made soulless.

In this outing, Mislan and Johan find themselves up against a baffling case - a murdered girl, with no visible signs of identity. Who killed here and why.? Their investigations will lead them into the seedy world of human trafficking, where the stakes are high, and the clientele influential. These people, Mislan observes, "... are souless, living on income from sex slaves ..". As mentioned, power and influence hold sway, and we know Mislan is not one for following the rules, putting offside those that could help him and increasing the antagonisism of those that want him out of the way.

Mislan's personal life takes a back seat to this investigation - his son is away with his ex-wife, his lover, Dr Safia is becoming distant, and Mislan seems more wrapped up in the case to notice what is going on around him.

There are many loose ends that need tying up before this case can be solved by Misland nad his team - but in the process, will Mislan be one of them?

A decent follow on for this series set in Kuala Lumpur - and the setting makes a nice change from the predominance of Euro-centric crime fiction.