KT Medina, White Crocodile, book review: A complex story is told with a spare, stark style

White Crocodile certainly has plenty of teeth for a debut novel. KT Medina rose to be a troop commander with the Territorial Army engineers and then acted as a consultant to mine clearance charities in Cambodia, and her first book transports you to the minefields in that benighted country – fields that still kill.

Having sucked you into that sultry milieu filled with horror and dread, she shows you around with a murder mystery full of pace, and with a very snappy ending.

It is a mightily impressive effort to combine a fine, taut story with so many topical issues. Here we find the evils of modern day slavery, sexual tourism, child abuse, and domestic violence alongside the lingering legacy of the Khmer Rouge ordnance (even Jeremy Clarkson gets a mention). It sounds like a tall order but it’s not clunky and you rarely feel preached at. You may sometimes feel you want to put the book down, but that is a testament to the unflinching strength of Medina’s story. And you will pick it up again.

A good thing too, because as the mine clearance chief MacSween points out, the world’s attention has shifted elsewhere: “We were top of the tree 15 years ago when Princess Di was around, but now we’ve been shoved out by one-legged lesbians or whatever the fuck the donating public is into this week.” Okay, so a bit of preaching, but that’s it, sermon over.

The complex story is told with a spare, stark style and the Battambang location is evocatively rendered, never more so than in the minefield at Kho Kroneg. The motif of the red and white tape indicating the boundaries of the cleared areas is particularly powerful. The description of the job itself provides as much tension as the murder investigation and acts as a neat narrative accompaniment. “It was early. Mist still clung in hollows. Johnny’s Khmer cleaners, slight figures in pale blue MCT fatigues, were already working in their lanes, flak jackets and helmets on, visors down, eyes locked on the ground. Total concentration, and just the ambient hum of insects to mar the silence.”

The problem with such a good debut is you worry that the author won’t be able to repeat the feat. This is perhaps especially the case with Medina, since she was writing about her specialist subject. But on this evidence she has enough talent to apply her mind to any story. Let’s hope so, because this is a powerful tale.

White Crocodile, by KT Medina, Faber & Faber £12.99