A disappearance and a tangled knot of sex and politics involving a stripper and Singapores former chief minister.
Sydney, 1966. Flower power is in full swing. The Cold War is at its height.
Somewhere in Kings Cross, Singapores former Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock is missing. Now the Malaysian High Commissioner to Australia, he had left his home in Canberra without a word of where he had gone.
Is he dead? During his reign as Chief Minister, he had cracked down hard on the Communists, and they will want to settle scores with him. Is he in hiding from mounting debts? Lim is known for his punts on the horses on weekends. Or is he mixed up in Cold War espionage? One of his ministers, Chew Swee Kee, was alleged to have received money from the CIA and therere rumours Lim had his share of it.
And how is a 19-year-old stripper, Sandra Nelson, Russian by birth, involved in this shady business? Is she Lims honey trap?
Private detective Dave Chen has to unravel these tangled knots of political intrigue and personal trauma and confront his own demons.
Written in poetic form by Felix Cheong and wonderfully illustrated by Arif Rafhan, The Showgirl and the Minister is inspired by the real-life disappearance of Lim over ten days in 1966.
Arif Rafhan is an award-winning comics artist based in Kuala Lumpur. His work can be seen in more than forty publications in Malaysia, Singapore, and the US. His contribution includes Malaysias longest-running humour magazine, Gila-Gila. Arif has been working under Dato Lat for his latest graphic novel, Mat Som 2. His graphic novel Amazing Ash & Superhero Ah Ma 2, his fourth collaboration with writer Melanie Lee, won Best Young Persons Title at the Singapore Book Awards in 2023. The Showgirl and the Minister is his fourth collaboration with Felix Cheong.
Felix Cheong is the author of twenty-five books across different genres, from poetry to short stories, from childrens picture books to young adult fiction. He has also published four graphic novels, including the noir detective Sprawl series in collaboration with Arif Rafhan. Winner of the National Arts Councils Young Artist Award in 2000, Felix has been invited to writers festivals all over the world, including Edinburgh, Austin, Sydney, Brisbane, and Christchurch.
