Adapting the Golden Age Crime Fiction Genre in the “Kain Songket Mysteries”Series

In this paper, I examine the way in which the conventions of the Golden Age genre of crime fiction have been adapted to a completely different socio-cultural settingin Barbara Ismail’s “Kain SongketMysteries”. The Golden Age novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers offer neat solutions to their mysteries, implying an unproblematic return to the right path; at the same time, the conventions of the form underline the corruption and danger hidden within these apparently perfect societies. Similarly, Ismail focuses on life in a village in Kelantan, Malaysia, in the 1970s, offering her readers a chance to revel in the gracious social order of the time, while creating inevitable juxtapositions with the ways in which that society has changed in the present. Ismail’s seemingly rose-tinted vision of the Kelantan of forty years ago develops as the novel progresses, culminating in a rather bleak assessment of where that society is heading.