John L Rosewarne
posted 13 March 2007

Post-Suharto, Indonesia remains rife with vice and corruption of all kinds, and as an employee of an unspecified NGO, Graham Young’s task is the investigation of irregularities in the flow of aid to the newly ‘free’ country. Disenchanted, disaffected and cynically misanthropic, Young’s main objectives are to be responsible for nobody other than himself and to keep the world around him in soft focus with the assistance of liberal quantities of gin. Seedy Jakarta bars are ideal haunt for such a man. However, a chance encounter with a sweaty, drunken ex-pat who, in his grubby whites seems to be drawn straight from the gallery of white bad guys in exotic places, launches him into a nightmare world of danger and intrigue: a world in which his studied detachment is no longer an option.

His brief encounter leads directly to a visit from the morally ambiguous detective Suprianto of the Jakarta police, a body on a mortuary slab, and the dark career of the faceless, demonic Doctor White. Suprianto is investigating a series of brutal sexual murders of young girls at the hands of this sexual predator, and the Paradise club encounter has implicated Young. Over the following days his world is turned upside down.

He is under surveillance, but by whom? Sinister powers are being marshalled against him, and he has powerful but invisible enemies. Danger lurks in the shadows and around every corner. In rapid succession he is attacked by knife wielding strangers, has an ominous scrap of paper bearing a thumb print in blood pressed into his hand, finds a body in his hotel room, sees ghosts under trees, and receives a nocturnal visit from ‘crocodile eyes’, an agent of the real power in the land, impeccably polite but filled with menace.

Amongst those watching and following him are two in particular: firstly Suprianto, at one moment a sober, dedicated force for law and justice, at the next, seemingly an agent of the old corruption and abuse. Then there is the smiling Santo; a young man who it is definitely dangerous to know, who assures Young that he thinks he is ‘one of the good guys’. Hovering at his shoulder like Scrooge’s Christmas spectres they take him on a tour of the dark reality of Jakarta where nobody is quite as they seem, from the waitresses with forced smiles for contemptuous Westerners (known in the local parlance as ‘Bules’) to the grieving father who sold his murdered daughter to Doctor White. It is a world from which the privileged whites safe behind security gates in their modern luxury apartments are insulated or choose to ignore.

The ex-pat community of Jakarta lives in a permanent climate of fear; nervously watching CNN reports of violence elsewhere in the country, maintaining phone trees and being ready to take the option of flight. It’s a mindset which Young has held in disdain. Now flight appears to be his only option but all his attempts to board trains and planes are frustrated the mind bending complexity and chaos of Indonesia. As a lone Westerner in the teaming queues he feels doubly exposed and threatened. Each option of escape closing one by one, just as it appears he has succeeded in slipping the net he is hauled back at the last minute by the pursuing powers. It is as if he has been toyed with like a shadow puppet or a figure in a computer game. What is apparent is that he has been manipulated by unseen forces. This is a situation from which there is no ironic cop-out and brings us to Brayne’s final twist in the tale.

Brayne mines just about every murder mystery thriller there has ever been to put his protagonist through a truly cathartic experience, forcing him to confront his selfish amorality and emerge a changed man. As a somewhat formulaic thriller, the book serves rather well. This is clearly a genre for which the author has a fondness. However, aside from and perhaps more interesting than the pager turner narrative are Brayne’s efforts to explore and explain the practical and moral dilemmas of the ‘free’ Indonesia.

The state of the economy, the weakness of political institutions, and the unfinished power struggle within the elite were listed as just a few of the obstacles facing a reformist Indonesia immediately after the departure of Suharto. As one interlocutor tells Young, ‘Everyone wants Reformasi… but they also need to eat’. As Brayne makes clear, the night visitors, Doctor White and his protectors and the ever present fear that the former masters are ready and waiting to re-assert themselves, testify to this fact. He paints a picture of a society where ordinary people have been driven to desperate lengths in order to survive. Centuries of colonisation followed by decades of corrupt repression have forced virtually everyone to make pacts or at least compromise with what Brayne deliberately styles ‘Evil’. It has also left a lasting legacy, in effect a colonial mentality: ‘Indonesians are like sheep...’ Suprianto urges Young to look compassionately at his people: ‘to be evil you have to be strong…Not many people can be so strong’. He may have been a corrupt policeman but he, like many of his fellows, is struggling with his own sense of guilt as well as the still active powers of evil around him. One is tempted to say a society where everyone is in some way guilty and where everyone is a victim. ‘However much influence a man may hold, there is always someone else who is more powerful.’

Hand in glove with the corruption of the former elites are the Westerners. After all, is not the evil Doctor White aptly named? The privileged, fearful ‘time warped misfits’ who despair at the greed and vice around them yet feed it when it suits them, or the would be studs in the Moonbeam Bar: ‘Sad little people back in England…They come over here and find they’re like little white Gods’. If Indonesia is free, the question being asked by Brayne seems to be ‘Free to be what?’ The West holds itself up as the example and beacon of freedom, but perhaps it isn’t much of an example. Brayne is harshly critical. ‘You Westerners. You don’t deserve your freedom. It’s something precious and you tread it in the mud’. The only ‘Bules’ who receive a remotely sympathetic treatment are the couple from Halifax who: don’t think much of the toilets, can’t eat coconut, and who normally go to Portugal but are touring the world because, ‘It does us good to see how some people suffer. Otherwise we forget how lucky we are’.

Brayne returns time and again to the struggle between good and evil: notions that the amoral Young appears to reject. Indonesia is a place with ‘Good guys, bad guys all mixed up. And no one’s sure which way to jump’. During an interlude in Bali, Young is guided through a performance of Calonarang, an ancient tale which deals specifically with the un-ending struggle between light and dark; one which has been constantly up-dated to fit new circumstances. In the play, the wicked Rangda battles Barong, the force for good. Rangda is doomed to be beaten but will always return in a new form. Jakarta Shadows can be seen as Brayne’s revision of the Calonarang. Young is as tainted by the forces of evil as anyone else, but is manipulated from the shadows as if controlled by a Dalang puppeteer to be the Barong in the book’s shadowy climax.

The Young character is somewhat one dimensional, but balancing the desire to construct in depth characters with complex motivation, while also serving the needs of the plot is always a difficult task when attempting a piece of this sort. What background we are given is sufficient for the needs of the story. Indeed, the one section which delves into his past life to explain why he is in Jakarta in the first place seems a trifle redundant. The familiarity of so many of the plot devices can be forgiven, though there are times when the narrative seems a little over contrived. However, the atmospherics are skillfully created. I almost expected Peter Lore and Sidney Greenstreet to put in an appearance. As an affectionate homage to Christie, Chandler, Greene and Simenon and as a piece of thoughtful social commentary, Brayne’s first novel is well worth a read.