Sister Conchita and Sergeant Kella Mysteries
2 primary works
Book 1
It's 1960 and Sergeant Ben Kella of the Solomon Islands police force is only a few days into a routine patrol of the most beautiful yet dangerous and primitive areas of the South Pacific. Yet, already, he has been cursed by a magic man, stumbled across evidence of a cult uprising and failed to find an American anthropologist who has been scouring the mountainous jungle in search of a priceless erotic icon.
To complicate matters further, at a local mission station, Kella discovers the redoubtable Sister Conchita secretly trying to bury a skeleton, before a mysterious gunman tries to kill her.
Mission-educated yet an aofia - the traditional peacemaker of the islands - Kella is forced to link up with Sister Conchita, an independent and rebellious young American nun, in order to track down the perpetrators of a series of bizarre murders . . .
Book 2
1960, and Sister Conchita, the young nun with a flair for detection, has been forced to leave her beloved Malaita and assume reluctant command of a run-down mission in the lush, primitive Western District of the Solomon Islands.The group of three elderly sisters currently there are rumoured to have 'gone native' and Conchita tries to grapple with these eccentric, tough-mind insurgents and the secrets they are keeping when an American tourist is murdered in their mission church but perplexingly, the colonial authorities want nothing to do with this bizarre crime.
Help is at hand for Sister Conchita in the shape of her friend Sergeant Ben Kella, the local police officer but also the aofia, the traditional law-bringer of the islands. Together, the idealistic young nun and practical witch doctor set out to solve the mystery. In the process they discover links to a local independence organisation, a powerful international logging company, and, most puzzling of all, to John F. Kennedy, a former wartime US naval officer in the area but now, thousands of miles away, about to become the 35th president of the USA.
Praise for Devil-Devil:
The mystery takes a back seat to [Kent's] knowledge of the exotic location and the combustible chemistry of his protaganists (the oddest couple since The African Queen), which add immensely to his story's charm. Kirkus Review