The Showgirl and The Minister

Sydney, 1966. Flower power is in full swing. The Cold War is at its height.
Somewhere in Kings Cross, Singapore’s 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 there’re 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 Lim’s 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.

About the Author

Felix Cheong is the author of twenty-five books across different genres, from poetry to short stories, from children’s 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 Council’s Young Artist Award in 2000, Felix has been invited to writers festival all over the world, including Edinburgh, Austin, Sydney, Brisbane and Christchurch. He holds a masters in Creative Writing and is currently an adjunct lecturer with the National University of Singapore, SIM, Curtin University and Murdoch University.
Arif Rafhan bin Othman is a comic artist, a mural artist, an animator, a doodler and a neighborhood art teacher in both digital and analog medium. His work has spanned from paintings, book illustrations (for MPH & Fixi), graphic novels, (MPH & Maple Comics), graphic facilitation (BNM & PruBSN), corporate comics and art installation for corporate offices.
He was the Creative Director in his previous e-Learning company for 11 years before embarking into servicing the wider industry and established himself as a true artist. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in IT (Hons) in 2000 with minor in Multimedia from PPP/UiTM, Shah Alam, Malaysia.