by Jesse Q. Sutanto
When Vera Wong comes down the stairs from her apartment to her tea shop for her morning walk, she’s stunned to discover a man’s dead body on the floor.
But there’s no doubt in her mind that she can provide great assistance to the San Francisco Police Department in this matter. After all, “nobody sniffs out wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands.”
Since her husband Jinlong passed away and her son Tilly has left home and gone to work as an associate in a law firm, Vera has plenty of time on her hands.
She pulls on her long dishwashing gloves (to avoid leaving her fingerprints on the evidence) and checks the victim’s pockets. His wallet says he’s Marshall Chen. She replaces the wallet. She finds a thumb drive in his hand. That she decides to keep until the right moment to give to the police. Then she gets a Sharpie and carefully draws an outline of the corpse on the floor. Finally, she calls the police.
Vera has a strategy: The murderer may want that thumb drive and come back to her tea shop to find it. Any new customers who in will be her suspects. Since she only has one regular customer a day, it won’t be difficult to identify the new ones.
The police are not pleased by the outline Vera drew. They also refuse her offers of special tea to sharpen their minds. And they aren’t convinced there’s been a murder.
Vera decides she’ll surprise them by finding the murderer.
She soon has four new visitors to consider as suspects. Unbeknownst to her, all have a connection to Marshall. None plan to discuss that with Vera. Her first suspect is Riki Herwanto, who leads her to believe he’s a reporter for BuzzFeed. The second suspect is Sana Singh, who claims to be a podcaster. Julia Chen and her infant daughter peek in the tea house windows but quickly disappear up the street when Vera notices them.
The final suspect appears to be the murdered man resurrected. But in fact is the victim’s twin brother Oliver.
“Generations of Chinese mothers have perfected the art of sniffing out guilt, and Vera can practically see waves of guilt churning out of the young people gathered before her.”
But there’s just one more thing in her way: she likes them all too much to believe any of them could be killers.
This is a fun cozy mystery with wonderful characters from the salty, canny Vera to her four suspects who’ve gotten themselves into a pile of grief associating with Marshall to the skeptical Officer Gray.
Vera brews special teas for every encounter. The descriptions of the flavors are mouth-watering.
Ultimately, Vera is the only person who can solve this murder, which the police don’t even believe is a murder. But in the process, she also solves the problems plaguing her four suspects and even manages to do some matchmaking.
If cozy mysteries with an Asian twist are your cup of tea, you might also enjoy DEATH BY DUMPLING. Vera Wong joins a number of fun older sleuths such as THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB, THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB and KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE.
This book was nominated for a 2024 Best Paperback Original Award by the Mystery Writers of America.
The Author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
Jesse Q. Sutanto is a Chinese-Indonesian author of award-winning adult, young adult and children’s middle grade books.
Her books for adults include DIAL A FOR AUNTIES, FOUR AUNTIES AND A WEDDING. The film rights to DIAL A FOR AUNTIES was bought by Netfflix. Her young adult books include WELL, THAT WAS UNEXPECTED, THE OBSESSION and THE NEW GIRL. Her middle-grade books include THEO TAN and THE FOX SPIRIT.
She earned a masters in creative writing at Oxford University.
She currently lives in Jakarta with her English husband and their two children.
