The Formidable Miss Cassidy
1895: Miss Cassidy arrives in Singapore from Scotland. It is very, very hot. Her flame-red hair glows in the equatorial sun. She and her ward are pulled through the streets on a rickshaw at a furious pace by a man whose waist, in her estimation, is less substantial than her own thigh.
Miss Cassidy’s ward is the frail Sarah Jane, who has lost her mother and no fewer than six siblings. Her troubled father, Captain Bendemeer, hires Miss Cassidy to tutor Sarah Jane in the ways of society. Miss Cassidy is no stranger to the East; she settles into her tasks with ease.
The unwary reader may be surprised when a naked woman glides through banana trees like a fish through water, opens a wide mouth full of sharp teeth to chomp on a human, and drinks his blood. Miss Cassidy is unfazed. She makes a note that she will see about it in the morning… and she does.
Having won one battle, she is soon drawn into another one – this time, she cares for two Chinese girls, and their widowed father is drawn to Miss Cassidy. Life is not easy, but Leda Cassidy is no ordinary heroine. She knows how to put strings, black iron needles, and salt – among other things – to good use, and she has family ties to fall back on. She can even converse with a Hindu Goddess.
En route to dispelling dark forces, Miss Cassidy introduces us to the scents, folklore, customs, and cityscape of multicultural Singapore, where a temple to the Chinese sea goddess, Mazu, completed by Indian workers, has a grill gate from Glasgow.
An afterword might have helped readers to appreciate some details (for example, landmarks referred to by now-replaced names), but this prize-winning book remains a highly entertaining mix of fantasy, romance and historical fiction.
