Fear of Landing

It's the early 1980s. Even as President Suharto violently stifles dissent, the islands of Java and Bali are under the million-dollar development schemes of Western governments. Canadian veterinarian Abner Dueck wanted a mundane job. But when some cows die under mysterious circumstances, Dueck's life changes abruptly. Soon after, two of his friends are murdered. To unravel the mysterious deaths, Dueck must first understand the long shadow cast upon Indonesian life by the 1966 massacres; the complexities of their music; the demands and intrigues of love and conspiracy, death and mystery; and of course, the stories behind Indonesia's cultural heritage and personal identity.

About the Author :
David Waltner-Toews is an epidemiologist, essayist, poet, fiction writer, veterinarian, and a specialist in the epidemiology of food and waterborne diseases, zoonoses (diseases other animals share with people) and ecosystem health. A professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph, he is the founding president and CEO of Veterinarians without Borders/ Veterinaires sans Fronti res - Canada (www.vwb-vsf.ca), as well as the founding president of the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health (www.nesh.ca). He has worked in many countries, including Canada, India, Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, Uganda, Guatemala, and Peru. Besides being an author on nearly 100 peer-reviewed scholarly papers, he has published half a dozen books of poetry, a collection of poems and recipes, an award-winning collection of short stories, and four books of non-fiction. He sometimes performs poetry in a special dress and kerchief (The "Tante Tina" poems). He thinks he might have lived long enough to have filched sufficient bits of wisdom to start writing mystery novels.

Review :
"One of the ten best books of 2008." —Booklist "Set in the repressive Indonesia of the early 1980s, Waltner-Toews's compelling debut introduces an unlikely detective, Canadian veterinarian Abner Dueck. Dueck's investigation of the suspicious contents of a dead cow's stomach appears to result in the deaths of two friends and puts the vet in the uncomfortable position of trying to find out who killed them in a country where asking questions can lead to a quick burial. The list of possible suspects is endless, from whoever is poisoning cattle with strychnine to Dueck's own colleagues, skillfully characterized during a tour de force of a party scene. Constrained by threats to his life, Dueck never gets easy answers as he becomes enmeshed in a complex web of alliances and murder theories provided by people with their own interests at heart. Readers will be surprised to find descriptions of animal autopsies as intriguing as political schemes in this powerful and highly original portrait of a particular time and place." —Publishers Weekly (12/24/2007) starred review "David Waltner-Toews is a genuine polymath. He's a published poet, author of books on subjects as diverse as Mennonite history and exotic animal-to-human diseases. He's a professor of population medicine at the University of Guelph, an epidemiologist, a founder of Veterinarians Without Borders and the Network for Ecosystem Sustainability and Health. In his free time, he's written his first mystery novel, and it's terrific." —The Globe and Mail