Crime Scene Asia is a casebook written by award winning Australian Author Liz Porter of fascinating true stories throughout Asia. Its opening case begins when the body of a woman is found in a Singapore nature park. Nobody has reported her missing. Nobody knows who she is. The only clue to her identity is a set of tiny numbers etched into a series of implants in her teeth. Police door-knock the dentists of Singapore until they find the one who treated her. Then, following a trail of numbers called from her phone, they unmask her killer. In another case, set 300 kms away, in Kuala Lumpur, a married man is arrested for the murder of his mistress. Police are adamant that he is her killer. But the man’s lawyer can point to forensic evidence that tells a different story altogether. Meanwhile one of the book’s Hong Kong cases tells the story of a humble truck driver facing jail for his apparent involvement in a bombing plot allegedly masterminded by two of the former British colony’s most notorious gangsters. Then the evidence of a forensic scientist sets him free.

Is naval conflict in the Asia-Pacific region becoming more likely? On the face of it, this seems likely; nearly all countries in the region are rapidly modernising their navies and expanding their maritime capabilities at a time of increasingly rancorous disputes over sovereignty. This is especially the case in the East and South China Seas, with their supply of fish and largely untapped resources in oil and gas. Across the region there is a growing recognition of the economic importance of the sea, both for its resources and for the crucial shipping it facilitates. But economic growth goes both ways, developing increasing interdependence between the countries of the region. Expanding trade is subject to serious threats from pirates, drug-smugglers and other forms of maritime crime, and navies and coastguards are coming together to combat them. Which will prevail, the tendency to compete, or the tendency to cooperate? In reviewing the maritime policies of the major countries of the region, this volume aims to answer this question.

Fractured Scenes is the first extensive academic account of music and sound art practices that fall outside of the scope of ‘mainstream music’ in Hong Kong. It combines academic essays with original interviews conducted with prominent Hong Kong underground/independent musicians and sound artists as well as first hand-accounts by key local scene actors in order to survey genres such as experimental/noise music, deconstructed electronic music, indie-pop, punk, garage rock, sound art and DIY ‘computer’ music (among others). It examines these Hong Kong underground music practices in relief with specific case studies in Mainland China and Japan to begin re-defining the notion of a ‘musical underground’ in the context of contemporary Hong Kong.